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THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 



" The Carolina Mountains" 
F}-om a zvaUr-color drawing by Miss Amelia M. 



THE 
CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

BY 
MARGARET W. MORLEY 

Author of "The Song of Life," "The Bee People," etc., etc. 
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(3Efte fiiberjSiDe j^peiiii Cambritise 

1913 



rz6^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY MARGARET W. MORLEY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published October iqij 



^J. 



^^ 



Ml 



^ 



TO 

G. H. W. 

INSPIRER, CRITIC, FRIEND 



CONTENTS 

I. THE PEACH TREES ARE IN BLOOM . . I 

II. TRAUMFEST ON THE BLUE RIDGE . . 6 

III. THE FOREST 15 

IV. THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN NATIONAL 

PARK 24 

V. HOW SPRING COMES IN THE SOUTHERN 

MOUNTAINS 36 

VI. THE CARNIVAL 49 

VII. SUMMER IN THE MOUNTAINS ... 62 

VIII. AUTUMN 70 

IX. IS IT WINTER? 79 

X. Cesar's head and chimney rock . . 88 

XI. THE high mountains 102 

XII. FLAT ROCK COMMUNITY, AN IDEAL OF 

THE PAST Ill 

XIII. ASHEVILLE II9 

XIV. THE EARLY SETTLERS 138 

XV. BILTMORE AND THE NEW ERA . . .148 

XVI. THE PEOPLE 161 

XVII. THE SPEECH OF THE MOUNTAINS . . 171 

XVIII. 'light and come in 182 

XIX. PENELOPE AND NAUSICAA . . . .190 

XX. A VANISHING ROMANCE . . . .201 

XXI. CHURCH AND SCHOOL 218 

XXII. THE CHEROKEE NATION . . . .232 

XXIII. THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS . . 239 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 



XXIV. HIGHLANDS 

XXV. THE SAPPHIRE COUNTRY . 
XXVI. THE FORKS OF THE PIGEON RIVER 
XXVII. PISGAH AND THE BALSAMS 
XXVIII. MOUNT MITCHELL 
XXIX. THE FORKS OF THE RIVER TOE 
XXX. LEDGER AND THE ROAN . 
XXXI. LINVILLE FALLS .... 
XXXII. BLOWING ROCK .... 

XXXIII. THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN 

XXXIV. THE HOLIDAY OF DREAMS 
INDEX 



248 
261 
277 
290 
302 
315 
325 
338 
349 
363 
379 
389 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Carolina Mountains . . . Colored frontispiece ^ 
Mr. George H. Warner and his; "Armored Pine" . i6 K 

A Road in the Woods 32 '"'^ 

A Laurel Path 56 ■ 

In Summer Time 66 > 

The Sorghum-Cutter 7A^ 

Sunday Morning 80^ 

A "Bald" 104 f 

Crossing the River 108 

An Old-time House 142 . 

Going Home 162 . 

A Mountaineer's Home 182 

Getting Dinner 186 ' 

Penelope 194 i'' 

Over the Tubs 198 ^ 

A Moonshine Still 206 

A Good Foot-Bridge 240 

Whiteside Mountain 250 

The Devil's Court-House 254^ 

Near Highlands 258 

Ford and Bridge of the South Toe River . . .316 

A Pasture on the Roan 332 

Peaks of Grandfather Mountain 364 ' 

The Grandfather Profile 370 

The Yonahlossee Road 376 

The frontispiece is from a water-color by Miss Amelia M. Watson, 
who has also supplied the cover illustration and the drawing for the 
end-paper map. The other illustrations are from photographs by 
the author. 



THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

I 

THE PEACH TREES ARE IN BLOOM 

MARCH winds may howl, dull skies may lower, 
and chill airs pinch, up there in the frozen 
North, but down here — the peach trees are in bloom ! 
They have opened like a burst of sunshine. On all 
sides, as far as the eye can reach, the landscape has 
over it the glow of peach blossoms. 

If you happen to be crossing the State of North 
Carolina towards the mountains at this time, you 
will get a thrilling sense of the real mission of the 
peach tree. As the train sweeps over the country, 
one flower- wreathed picture follows another : here a 
tumble-down cabin with peach trees in ecstatic 
bloom at one corner, there a hollow filled with airy 
pink blossoms from the midst of which rises a farm- 
house roof; the sordid little village, the unpainted 
house, the slope, the hilltop, each and everything 
your eye beholds is an adorable picture by grace of 
the blossoming peach trees. They seem to have 
alighted by chance, here, there, and everywhere, like 
wild flowers. You see them scattered over the cotton 
fields singly or in groups, covering the waste places, 
making long hedges, embowering the earth. 

Occasionally these trees are in orchards that do not 



2 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

begin anywhere in particular, and trail off to no- 
where, a ravishing maze of pink blossoms. Some- 
times crowding close to the track, they fly past the 
car window a mere blur of color. Again a shining 
band of them stands still on the brow of a distant 
hill. The sky above is blue. The warm red earth is 
overlaid with tawny stubble, excepting where the 
plough has turned up a bright field. The air is soft 
and full of the smell of the earth. All Nature is in 
tune with the joyous peach trees. 

In the yards are yellow bushes and dafi"odils. 
Snowy clusters of wild plums or of service blossoms 
shine out from the woods here and there, but the 
event of the day is the endless procession of blossom- 
ing peach trees. They go dancing by, hour after 
hour; trees, old and young, large and small, standing 
in all attitudes, graceful, laughing, exquisite — there 
is no end to them. From the sea to the mountains, 
the whole South is smiling through a veil of peach 
blossoms. 

As finally you approach the mountains that form 
the western end of North Carolina, you catch glimpses 
of heights so divinely blue that you seem about to 
enter some dream world through their magical por- 
tals. 

Through an opening between the mountains the 
train makes its way, and at an elevation of about a 
thousand feet leaves you at Traumfest, and contin- 
ues its course up and over the difficult barrier of the 
Blue Ridge. For Traumfest lies in a nook of the Blue 
Ridge Mountains, and although it may not appear 



PEACH TREES IN BLOOM 3 

by that name on the maps, the place itself is a 
reality. The enfolding mountains, so dreamy, so 
enchanting in coloring when seen at their best mo- 
ments, will explain the name and justify it, for 
translated into English "Traumfest" means ''Holi- 
day of Dreams," or, if one is willing to tamper a little 
with grammatical endings, it means, best of all, per- 
haps, "Fortress of Dreams." Here lingers a touch of 
summer even in midwinter, because of the evergreen 
trees and shrubs that so abound. And here spring 
comes early, for Traumfest, be it known, lies in the 
thermal belt, that magic zone where, although it may 
freeze, there is never any frost. 

In this gentle land where even the cocks crow with 
a Southern accent, the newcomer, half-awake in the 
early morning, hears the great city he has recently 
left singing like a city of the blest. As consciousness 
emerges from the mists of sleep, however, one dis- 
covers that although the singing is real, it does not 
come from the town, now happily far away. It 
comes from the negroes down in the hollow, from the 
birds in the trees, and from the little children of the 
white people who live on the hilltops. All Traumfest 
seems to be singing. It makes one want to sing too. 
And that is the magic and the charm of the South ; 
cares fly away and one wants to sing. 

Mingling as it were with the singing of the people 
is the subtle smell of spring. One wonders what that 
odor of the Southern spring comes from, and sus- 
pects that the smoke of pine wood ascending like 
incense from the hearthstones in all the houses has 



4 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

something to do with it. It is a fragrance peculiar to 
the South, places, as well as animals, flowers, and 
races, having their distinguishing odors. 

One soon discovers that the half-wild peach trees 
that make the foothills so lovely are also present in 
the mountains, where they bloom a little later and 
quite as enchantingly. To walk along them is quite 
as delightful as to fly past them on the train, and 
there is this advantage, one can hear as well as see 
them. If the blossoming trees do not sing aloud and 
clap their hands for joy, they at least draw to them- 
selves a blissful chorus of happy creatures. Little 
things on wings have suddenly appeared. They seem 
to have blossomed with the peach trees, for yester- 
day they were not. Now the air hums with them, 
bees, wasps, flies, beetles, bugs, butterflies, all as 
busy as though they were of tremendous importance 
in the scheme of the universe. And walking thus 
among the blossoming trees, we can smell as well as 
hear and see them. 

It is hard to tell which is best, the beauties of the 
day or the beauties of the night in this smiling land. 
The nights are so cool, so fragrant, and so enticing 
that one has an impulse to roam the woods in the 
magical moonlight and under the softly glowing 
stars. The stars hang big and dewy, dreamy lights in 
the vault of heaven. And there are so many of them, 
so bewilderingly many ! That great star one sees in 
midwinter, glowing low towards the horizon and 
competing with Sirius in brilliancy, is Canopus of 
the Southern heavens, and in the month of March 



PEACH TREES IN BLOOM 5 

the faint star Fomalhaut is seen in the Southern 
sky below Scorpio, also unknown in the Northern 
heavens, while that rare sight, the great cone of the 
zodiacal light, is sometimes to be seen just after the 
sun has set. 

And the night here has its well-remembered sounds, 
the gentle breeze lightly sighing through the pines, 
the gust of wind striking the trees into deeper music, 
the trill of a bird, the muffled call of an owl, and in 
summer the insistent call of the whip-poor-will and 
the orchestral boom of a thousand insect performers. 
Besides these, there is one sound that never fails 
summer or winter. At stated intervals the cocks wake 
up and crow. They divide the night into watches of 
about three hours. You hear one clear call, a voice 
responds, then here and there and everywhere, like 
watchmen exchanging the signal, the cry goes forth; 
you hear the circle widening from that first challenge 
to distant margins where the voices are faint almost 
as memories — you imagine them circling on and on 
orver the earth, and then all is still for another three 
hours. At the last crowing of the cocks, as though 
the sun were answering to their call, a gentle radi- 
ance flows up into the dome of the sky and 

" tenderly the haughty day 
Fills his blue urn with fire." 



T 



II 

TRAUMFEST ON THE BLUE RIDGE 

,- I tHE Blue Ridge! What mountains ever offered 
themselves to the sun so enchantingly as the 
long curve of the Appalachian chain where it passes 
through Virginia and North Carolina down to Ala- 
bama, running all the way full southwest! This 
battlement of heaven was not named by accident. 
It was named Blue because there was no other name 
for it. It is blue; tremendously, thrillingly blue; 
tenderly, evasively blue. And the sky that contains 
it is also entrancingly blue; even the storms do not 
make it sullen, and when they pass, the sun breaks 
out more radiantly than ever. Beyond the Blue 
Ridge in North Carolina, other and higher mountains 
rise like spirit forms into the deep sky, rank upon 
rank, height upon height, guarded as it were and 
protected by the encircling wall of the Blue Ridge. 
Traumfest, Fortress of Dreams, rests in a vast 
amphitheatre on the eastern front of the Blue Ridge, 
an amphitheatre formed by a cordon of forest-cov- 
ered mountains that nearly inclose the place, and 
among which are Hogback on the south and Tryon 
Mountain on the north, both descending towards 
the east in a series of ridges surmounted by low 
peaks, and leaving open between them a wide arc 
for the sun to enter. And how the sun does enter, 



TRAUMFEST ON THE BLUE RIDGE 7 

flooding the place and also the mountains that inclose 
Traumfest as with loving arms. 

The peculiar charm of Traumfest comes from the 
fact that it lies thus open to the east ; it does not have 
to wait for the sun to climb and look in after his first 
morning freshness is dimmed. Its horizon is in reality 
the horizon of the plains. In the dewy morning one 
sees the sky lighten, and then the torch of day flash 
from hill-crest to hill-crest, the tree-tops kindling in 
masses, with night shadows yet intervening. If the 
day is clear, you may look far down the sea of color to 
where there rises as it were an island, long, rounded, 
and pale blue, or maybe the color of mist, and 
scarcely visible against the sky of which it seems a 
part. That faint, sweet island swimming in the mists 
is King's Mountain, where one of the bravest deeds 
in the history of the New World was once done by a 
little band of heroes from these mountains. 

Because of its warm and beautiful location, and 
because the railroad came through that open door of 
the mountains, passing up the valley of the Pacolet 
and over the crest of the Blue Ridge to Asheville, 
Traumfest is not only the largest of the villages on 
the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge, but was among 
the first to become a resort for visitors from all parts 
of the country, here having grown up a friendly 
community representing more than two dozen states. 
Strangers say that Traumfest reminds them of an 
Old World village, with its bright painted houses 
and the little church with its square stone tower, the 
gift of one who lived here and loved the place. Like 



8 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the peach trees, Traumfest seems to have happened, 
straggHng about over a number of ridges separated 
from each other by deep hollows through which pass 
the connecting roads or paths, or down which run 
dancing brooks. Like the rest of the mountain vil- 
lages, it is all up and down hill, most of the houses 
having their front door on the hilltop and the back 
door down below somewhere. It adds to the un- 
studied effect of the place that its houses are set at 
every angle, each person placing his as fancy dic- 
tates, but avoiding as by instinct planting any 
building square with the points of the compass. 

Although Traumfest now contains enough new 
settlers considerably to temper the manner of life, 
its ancient quality is not all gone, as he who tries to 
get anything done on time, or done at all, will soon 
discover. That ox team slowly pulling a load of wood 
along Traumfest 's main residence street also tends 
to dispel any illusion concerning the extent of change 
that may have taken place, while four oxen attached 
to one small cart sometimes hint at primitive roads 
not far away. 

Traumfest's main street is bright red in color, for 
the Blue Ridge, although so enchantingly blue in the 
distance, has a soil composed largely of red clay, the 
characteristic soil of the whole mountain region, as 
also of the foothills. Consequently long threads of 
red and ochre and pink are woven through the sunny 
greens that here prevail as the roads wind uphill and 
down, over the heights and through the hollows. 
Red roads wind past houses with red-tinted founda- 



TRAUMFEST ON THE BLUE RIDGE 9 

tlons and chimneys chinked with red mud, and 
along through fields where the vegetation is sparse, 
as though loath to hide the fervid color of the soil, 
while here and there you will see a stream flowing 
with blood-red water. Even the wasps' nests that so 
plentifully adorn the walls and rafters are built of 
red mud. Men and boys have red ends to their 
trousers, and reddish-looking shirt-sleeves, horses 
have red hoofs and white mules have bright red legs. 
It must not be supposed, however, that all the earth 
is red; there is some gray soil, some that is brown, 
and much that is yellow; but red predominates to 
such a degree that you think of this as a red land. 

Reinforcing the warm color of the soil is the sunny 
nature of the greens. One never sees here the cold 
dark greens of the North ; even the pine trees have a 
warm tint as though soaked in sunshine, and on the 
eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge there is no green- 
sward, the ground in summer being covered with 
sparse wild grasses, and little bushes and herbs that 
paint the landscape in many tones. 

Lying as it does on the South Carolina state line, 
Traumfest, in addition to its other attractions, has a 
spice of border romance, for constantly crossing 
from one state to the other is that picturesque 
figure, the "moonshiner," who persists in distilling 
corn whiskey in secret places and in passing the cup 
that cheers and most certainly inebriates to his will- 
ing neighbors, in defiance of the laws that declare 
such actions to be unlawful. Hogback and its com- 
panion. Rocky Spur, are in South Carolina, and be- 



10 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

tween them and Traumfest, and also in South Caro- 
lina, lies one of those mysterious regions known as 
the " Dark Corners," into whose dread precincts one 
is warned with ominous head-shakings not to ven- 
ture, for here generations of moonshiners have car- 
ried on the distillation of corn whiskey in a fashion 
nominally secret, undoubtedly reprehensible, and 
very picturesque. 

The Southern sun that floods the mountains and 
beautifies the landscape has an irresistible influence 
over the people as well. No native thinks of disobey- 
ing its implicit command — ' * Thou shalt not hurry ' ' ; 
therefore the native-born of the Blue Ridge, no 
matter what else he may lack, is rich in time, a pos- 
session denied to the foreign invader who keeps his 
hoe in the tool-house where he can find it when he 
wants it. The mountain man leaves his in the field, 
and when he wants it, if he cannot find it, he drops 
the subject. That the ancient and honorable art of 
"settin' around" has been cultivated until it has 
grown into an integral part of life, you discover upon 
asking a mountain woman, who has waited in town 
half a day for some one to come, what she did with 
her time, and receive the illuminating reply, "Oh, I 
jest sot." 

That the sun in time conquers even the most 
vigorous newcomer is a fact plainly discernible in 
Traumfest, where the people may be divided into 
three classes : Northerners who are always in a hurry, 
Southerners who are never in a hurry, and North- 
erners in process of southernization, who are some- 



TRAUMFEST ON THE BLUE RIDGE ii 

times but not always in a hurry. In course of time 
the Northern type becomes obliterated unless re- 
newed from the original source. 

The perfect type, of which the rest of us are but 
modifications, is illustrated by the man from Turkey 
Pen Gap, to see whom move is a revelation. It is as 
though eternity were ever present in his conscious- 
ness. It was he who said in his inimitable drawl, " I 
would rather go up a mountain than daown one. For 
when you go up, you cain't hurry, and when you 
come daown, you have to." 

When a mountaineer unexpectedly completes a 
piece of work or makes some unwonted exertion, you 
may be tempted to think it the result of forethought, 
but if you ask him about it he will probably tell you 
it was because he "tuk-a-notion." Life has many 
consolations run on the " tuk-a- notion " principle. 

"We're powerful poor around here, but we don't 
mean no harm by it," is the cheery greeting you get 
when you visit an ancient native of the forest who 
you know does not think himself poor at all. He has 
plenty of time, the thing he values most. It was he 
who used to tell his reminiscences of the war, into 
which he had been drafted much against his will, and 
concerning the meaning of which he in common with 
his neighbors was not very clear. When you asked 
him about it he knit his brows, "studied" a minute, 
then slowly said, " Law, which side was I on?" But 
though the mountaineer may have been puzzled 
concerning the meaning and advantages of the War 
of the Rebellion, which he sometimes classified as " a 



12 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

rich man's war and a poor man's fight," and escaped 
if he could, it must not be supposed that he was either 
cowardly or uncertain where he understood the 
issue, a witness to the contrary being what occurred 
at King's Mountain that stormy day so long ago. 

The village people, many of whom are native 
North Carolinians, are not to be classed with the 
mountaineers of the rural districts, for the villagers 
for the most part have come from the old planta- 
tions, or from less primitive regions below the moun- 
tains. But although the village shops have recently 
attained a high standard in both products and prices, 
it is a fact of far-reaching psychological significance 
that even now you cannot buy a darning-needle in 
the city of Traumfest. Yet your neighbors seem 
happy and respected by their fellows and totally 
unconscious of any gap in their lives. 

Besides the white people, Traumfest is blessed 
with the negro, that true child of the sun who is 
found everywhere at the foot of the Blue Ridge, but 
is not so often seen in the higher mountains except- 
ing in the larger villages. He prefers to linger near 
the cotton-line, the mountains being too sparsely 
settled to satisfy his gregarious instincts. Most of 
the negroes here are descended from slaves brought 
up on the plantations in the immediate neighbor- 
hood. They are good, and for the most part as 
industrious at least as the white people, and when 
you know them personally and intimately, you can- 
not help loving them. They believe in ghosts and 
signs and a hereafter, they are afraid of the comet, 



TRAUMFEST ON THE BLUE RIDGE 13 

and they have good appetites. Many of them bear 
picturesque names bestowed upon them by the 
white people and yet more remarkable ones of their 
own selection, their feeling for rhythm alone often 
guiding them in their choice; hence the delightful 
name, Greenville Female Seminary Simms, proudly 
worn by a young girl of Traumfest. 

By far the most interesting characters among 
them are the few survivors of the old regime, who 
are really proud of their slavery and the fact that 
they learned how to work and how to behave. Among 
them is Aunt Hootie, whose full name she will 
proudly tell you in a sort of rhythmical chant. This 
is it — " Anna Maria, Lucy Lees, Licif^er, Mary 
Ann, Markalma, Gallahootie, Waters, Mooney. 
Aunt Hootie for short." Waters and Mooney were 
acquired by two excursions into matrimony, but 
the other names were bestowed at the baptismal 
font. Aunt Hootie is pious. When she comes to visit, 
which is generally about dinner-time, she graciously 
accepts an invitation to stay, never omitting rever- 
ently to "make a beginning," as grace before meat 
is expressed in the mountains. Aunt Hootie's "be- 
ginning ' ' is simple, but to the point ; folding her hands 
and composing her features she reverently remarks, 
"O Lord, thou knowest I need this," and proceeds 
to verify the assertion. 

Near her picturesque cabin on the outskirts of 
Traumfest is that of Aunt Eliza, who, though a 
churchwoman, is not, properly speaking, pious. She 
has outlived slavery and her husband, for both 



14 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

which blessings she is duly grateful. "Now I can 
put my bread and cheese upon the shelf and nothing 
can blow cold upon me unless I let it, ha! ha!" she 
exclaims triumphantly when congratulating herself 
upon having weathered the perilous seas of matri- 
mony. Aunt Eliza is a strong woman and works 
hard when she has to. When the bread and cheese 
get low, she goes to chopping down the pine trees on 
her piece of land. She converts them into firewood 
and hauls them to town on a home-made sled drawn 
by a very reluctant bull calf, whose neck she has 
subjected to the yoke despite his manifest disap- 
proval. It used to be one of the diversions of Traum- 
fest to see Aunt Eliza "wrastling" with her calf on 
the way to town, she at one end of the rope braced 
and inclined like a leaning tower, the calf at the 
other end, braced and rigid, leaning in the opposite 
direction. In her garden she raises, so she tells you, 
"oodles of gubers and taters," which translated 
means a great many peanuts and potatoes. Let not 
this appearance of energy, however, deceive or alarm 
any one, for Aunt Eliza manages to make her way 
without seriously disturbing the waters of Idleness. 
Some time since. Aunt Eliza got religion. She 
began going to church and profiting according to 
her light on the "preachment" and "taughtment" 
of the scriptures as there expounded, though her 
piety is intermittent, according to the long-suffering 
"preacher," who shakes his venerable head over her 
state as he remarks with a sigh, " Eliza is a mighty 
peace-breakin ' woman . ' ' 



Ill 

THE FOREST 

THE first thing one notices upon approaching 
the mountains is that the Blue Ridge is wooded 
to the top, the beautiful Blue Ridge with all its out- 
reaching spurs. And one later discovers that this is 
also true of the high mountains back of it, for the 
Southern Appalachian forests are not only the high- 
est-lying of all the hardwood forests in North Amer- 
ica, but the largest left in this once forest-covered 
country. Some six thousand square miles of them lie 
spread, a shining web of lights and colors, over the 
North Carolina mountains alone. 

But although trees clothe the mountains here as 
with a garment, their boundless expanse is not op- 
pressive, for the forest floor, unobstructed by glacial 
boulders and wet hollows, is easily traversed. As a 
rule its trees stand apart, tall, clean columns beneath 
which little green things and wild flowers grow, while 
the sun shines through the leafy roof. One reason 
the floors are so clean is that they are frequently 
swept by the fires that break out every winter either 
through carelessness, or else on purpose to clear the 
ground that fresh green may start for the cattle. In 
the dry season smoke clouds ascend on all sides. At 
night cities with their twinkling lights seem to have 
sprung up as by magic on the slopes, or else lines and 
curves of fire gird the mountain-tops. The atmos- 



i6 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

pheric effect of these fires Is lovely; a tender haze 
envelops the landscape, while the air is filled with 
that faint and exquisite fragrance of burning wood 
that one always associates with the South. The air 
is smoky, but how different these clouds of incense 
from the smoke of a city! Strong, sweet winds 
blow over the mountains, mingling the odor of grow- 
ing things with that of the burning forest. 

Such trees as fall from fire or other causes, in this 
ardent climate quickly resolve into their elements. 
If they do not burn up, they decompose, excepting 
the heartwood of mature pine trees that for years 
may lie embedded in the crumbling envelope of the 
outer wood, forming the fragrant "fat pine" of the 
South, a splinter of which kindles at the touch of 
a match. Heavy, translucent, and damp w^th resin- 
ous juices, it burns with fierce heat and fiercer 
flames, the smoke that ascends from it being heavy 
like lampblack, although it does not smell like that : 
it smells like the South. It is the same odor intensi- 
fied that steals over the earth when the sun is on the 
pine trees. For here the pine is everywhere present 
to the eye and to the sense of smell. Of all the trees 
it is the one the stranger first notices, and the first 
thing the newcomer says is, "How bright the pine 
trees look," for, instead of sharing the sombre aspect 
of pines that grow In the North, these seem full of 
sunshine. 

Perhaps the pine also owes its supremacy here as 
elsewhere to a certain atmosphere of antiquity cling- 
ing about it and unconsciously affecting the feelings 




G. H. W. AND HIS ARMORED PINE 



THE FOREST 17 

of one looking at It. For we know its family to be the 
sole arboreal survivor in this country of the myriads 
of strange forms that covered the earth in past 
geological ages — long before there were any broad- 
leaved trees in existence. However that may be, the 
ancient form of the pine gives a characteristic aspect 
to the scenery of the Carolina mountains, as well as 
characteristic fragrance to the woods, and a charac- 
teristic note in the music of the forest as the wind 
sweeps over it. 

The noblest tree among them, the tall Pinus 
echinata, inTraumfest known as the "armored pine," 
from the large plate-like scales of its bark, stands 
head and shoulders above the rest of the forest, its 
picturesque crown of twisted limbs overtopping the 
other trees along the crest of the ridges. 

Quite different in appearance is the Pinus Virgin- 
iana, whose spreading crown is close-dotted with 
little dark cones that cling fast for several years, 
until the tree finally looks like a Japanese decora- 
tion. This charming tree appears more mundane 
than the towering armored pine, whose spirit seems 
to be engrossed with matters of the sky. One could 
imagine the Pinus Virginiana laughing, but never 
the armored pine. It is the Pinus Virginiana that 
gives that delicious fragrance to roads banked with 
its young trees, a fragrance like that of a freshly 
opened tangerine orange. Besides these two, there 
are three or four other species of pine that blend 
their plumes with each other and with the foliage of 
the hardwood trees, and which fill the air with incense. 



'•'•i 



i8 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

On the high mountains west of the Blue Ridge 
are yet to be found grand primeval forests of 
mingled pines and hardwood trees; but the trees 
of the Blue Ridge, though there are noble ex- 
ceptions, are generally small, the forests here being 
sweet rather than majestic. And how sweet they 
are! 

Of the numberless hardwood trees that flourish 
here, the oaks perhaps stand first because of their 
numbers and the many forms in which they appear, 
from the lordly white oak to the little ridiculous jack 
oak. Conspicuous among them is that large tree that 
looks so like a chestnut, but which the native assures 
the newcomer is an oak, unanswerably clinching the 
argument with the information that "hit grows 
acorns," and with patience one learns in time to tell 
a chestnut leaf from the leaf of a chestnut oak. A 
generation ago the foothills and the lower mountains 
were covered with chestnut trees, some of them of 
enormous size. But these are gone, only a few stumps 
broad enough for a cabin floor remaining to tell the 
tale of the past. Where are they? The reckless wood 
cutter is not to blame this time, for there descended 
upon the chestnuts a blight that in a few years wiped 
them out until not a bearing tree was left on the 
lower slopes, though at higher levels they are yet so 
abundant that one looking at the mountains in early 
summer can clearly trace the ravines down their 
slopes by the rivers of chestnut bloom that brim 
them. The mountaineer's method of gathering 
chestnuts is characteristic. Going into the woods 



THE FOREST 19 

with an axe, he selects a tree loaded with ripe nuts 
and chops it down. 

The most beautiful as well as the most valuable of 
the hardwood trees here is the noble tulip-tree, pop- 
lar the people call it, whose grand, clean gray column 
rises out of the forest, the crown of bright green 
leaves overtopping all but the tallest of the pines. 
Liriodendron, the pretty botanical name of the tulip- 
tree, means a tree bearing lilies. And looking far up 
to the crown of this forest giant as its leaves unfold 
in early spring, one discovers that it indeed bears 
lilies, — upright, green and orange lilies, one on the 
end of each twig. In the autumn when the great trees 
stand leafless, each twig holds aloft a golden urn, the 
seed-pod, that remains in place, a unique and charm- 
ing decoration, until the following spring. There is 
something of romance attaching to these trees that 
stand so lordly and alone in our forests. They belong 
to a genus of which there are only two species in all 
the world, one in the eastern United States, the other 
in Asia. We have one tulip-tree, China has the 
other. 

Of course hickories, maples, elms, beeches, birches, 
and many other trees abound, although we lack the 
beautiful "American elm" that so adorns the old 
New England villages and lends romance to North- 
ern valleys. And the spectral white birch is not with 
us. But the sugar-maple, — ' ' sugar- tree ' ' the native 
here calls it, — abundant in some regions, sweetens 
the corn-pone of the mountaineer as agreeably as in 
the cold North it embellishes the buckwheat cakes 



20 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

of a winter's morning. The sugar-trees might yield 
a good profit to thrifty harvesters, but the time- 
honored method of chopping a hole in the trunk and 
sticking in a bit of bark to conduct the sap into a 
wooden trough on the ground, although time-sav- 
ing, does not produce results that command fancy 
prices, particularly as the rest of the process is equally 
free and easy. The troughs stand on the ground 
through the remainder of the year collecting water, 
twigs, leaves, and anything else that may chance to 
fall into them. In the winter all this freezes into a 
solid cake which the practical mountaineer has dis- 
covered can be turned out whole, thus giving less 
trouble than any other method of cleaning the 
troughs. Maple-sugar as made in the mountains 
may be black in color and diversified with many 
strong flavors, but the people have a pretty way of 
running it into empty eggshells, where it hardens, 
and can then be handed about and carried in the 
pocket with more regard to cleanliness than is ap- 
parent in any other part of its history. 

The stately wild cherry, or "mahogany," of the 
mountains, like the black walnut, has all but van- 
ished, its virtues being its undoing. Of the trees, un- 
known to the North, that one finds here, the most 
notable is the magnolia that lights up the woods in 
springtime with great ivory-white chalices brimmed 
with cloying fragrance. Walking in the forest you 
smell a penetrating, sweet odor that causes you to 
stand still and search the woods with your eyes until 
you see the white flowers shining in the distance. 



THE FOREST 21 

There are several varieties of these "cucumber" and 
"umbrella" trees, as the people call them. Their 
large, light-green leaves placed in a circle at the ends 
of the twigs have something of a tropical appear- 
ance, and there is also clinging to them that myste- 
rious romance of the East, for although there are 
some fifteen or more species of this genus in the 
world, all of them belong to eastern Asia and the 
eastern United States, some four or five species 
being common in our Southern mountains. 

Another tree which is found only in the Orient 
and the eastern part of the New World is the sour- 
gum, pepperidge, or tupelo, whose dark, close-ridged 
bark and twisted crown, weather-beaten attitude, 
and somewhat scanty foliage give it an air of indi- 
viduality that could not be dispensed with in the 
sentiment of the forest. Its wood is so tough that 
it soon dulls an axe, and lazy negroes were put to 
chopping it in slavery times, so the people say. 

The sweet-gum, or liquidambar, also abundant 
here, is not related to the sour-gum, but belongs to 
the romantic witch-hazel family, which perhaps is 
why its juices are so aromatic — the tree exuding 
copal at the slightest incision — and why its bark is 
so curiously ridged. 

Fortunately the larger gum trees, both sweet and 
sour, are apt to be hollow at the base, otherwise 
where would the mountaineer get his "bee-gums"? 
And what could replace in the landscape those rows 
of cylindrical hives, roofed with a board-end or a 
flat stone, that stand about wherever the owner 



22 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

takes a notion to set them? Could any honey go so 
well on hot corn-bread, that came not out of a bee- 
gum? 

It would be impossible within reasonable limits 
to do justice to the trees here, yet one could not 
dismiss them without a word concerning that be- 
guiling shape with the unfair name — the sourwood 
or Oxydendrum arboreum, which means the same as 
sourwood, but sounds better. This ladylike little 
tree is the most charming thing in the woods when 
its exquisite young leaves come out In the spring, 
and again In early summer when it is covered with 
drooping, handlike sprays of white flowers that look 
like lllles-of-the-valley, and give forth a fragrance 
delicate yet so penetrating that one can easily smell 
his way through the woods to a blossoming tree, 
where he will find the honey bees ahead of him. For 
in addition to its other virtues the sourwood yields 
the finest honey in the mountains, clear, delicate, 
white, and delicious. 

The botany tells us that this Oxydendrum is the 
only species of its genus, and that It Is found only 
in southeastern North America ; which is suspicious, 
since it has recently been discovered that almost if 
not all of our plants hitherto classed as monotypic 
have species in the Far East. So undoubtedly our 
pretty sourwood has an Asiatic sister who sits smil- 
ing in some corner of the Flowery Kingdom or the 
land of the Dragon or looks out over some fair 
Himalayan height. It is a pity it should suffer from 
such a name as "sourwood" just because its leaves 



THE FOREST 23 

are sour ! — why could it not have been named from 
its lovely flowers as the silver-bell tree was named 
from its?*. Why not call it "honey," as the negroes 
do those whom they love? 



IV 

THE SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN NATIONAL PARK 

SINCE the easiest way for the mountaineer to 
clear the land is to girdle the trees and let nature 
do the rest, we everywhere see those dreary openings 
in the forest known as "deadenings," where spectral 
dead trunks stand among the growing corn. These 
"deadenings" are made and abandoned one after 
another as the thin soil wears out, which on the 
poorer slopes happens in a year or two. Hence, while 
the mountains are yet covered with forests, the 
clearings are everywhere apparent, and in these later 
days are increasing with alarming rapidity. 

Long ago the Southern Appalachians rose clad 
with trees above a tree-clad world. The Indian 
roamed the dense primeval forests, cultivating the 
valley bottoms and hunting in the woods. He did 
not destroy the trees — and thus the balance be- 
tween man and the forests was kept. Then came the 
white man, and wherever he set his foot the tree 
retired. Wide fields of cotton and corn covered the 
lowlands, gardens and towns sprang up as by magic. 
But on the slopes of the mountains the forest undis- 
turbed fulfilled its old-time office of calling the rains 
and holding the rivers in leash. In time the newcomer 
reached the mountains and made his clearings on the 
slopes. He also burned the woods each spring to 



APPALACHIAN NATIONAL PARK 25 

clear away the pine needles, and thus help the grasses 
and tender herbs to spring up as food for his cattle. 
For these reasons the young trees were killed, and 
the heavy growth of virgin timber in time gave place 
to the present open woods. Yet the forest was not 
destroyed; it contended bravely with this strange 
new foe. 

As generations passed, the clearings grew larger 
and more numerous. Denuded slopes appeared, be- 
came gullied and washed, the streams thickened, they 
grew shallower and lost their crystal clearness as 
soon as they got to the settled country. The balance 
between man and the forest was being disturbed. 
But the forest yet contended bravely with the de- 
stroyer, and there was always that background of 
inaccessible high mountains, the birth-chambers of 
the streams, where the forests fulfilled their saving 
mission without hindrance. 

Then came the lumberman with his portable saw- 
mill, entering into the very heart of the forest ex- 
cepting the highest and wildest places, taking the 
largest trees, but leaving the top branches and half 
the trunk to cumber the ground and offer food to the 
fires that invariably broke out, fires immeasurably 
hotter and more destructive than the ordinary forest 
fire. Deeper and deeper into the wilderness pushed 
the lumberman, taking a small fraction of the forest 
and killing the rest. Nature gave quick warning. Fer- 
tile valley bottoms were overflowed, and the work of 
man's hands was often destroyed. After seasons of 
flood came seasons of low water, when the rivers 



26 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

refused their help and the mills shut down. "Why is 
this?" the people asked; "such things never hap- 
pened before." Had they looked to the mountains 
they would have seen the torn, bare slopes, the sun 
burning the dry earth where once lay water-soaked 
carpets of moss. The forest that once covered the 
mountains as with a garment, giving to man not 
only its wood, but what one might call its spiritual 
force of adjustment, was rapidly passing away. 

What slowly happened in these mountains took 
place more quickly in other regions until the whole 
country suddenly awakened to the fact that in a 
generation or two the wonderful forests of the New 
World would be no more. The prosperity of a nation 
depends also upon its forests. To lose them is a 
calamity too great to be borne, as nearly every one 
of the European nations has discovered through sad 
experience, — Spain in her mountains of bare rock 
reflecting the sun, but not condensing the moisture 
that causes the rains to fall, France in destructive 
floods, Germany in lack of wood, all in one or usu- 
ally many ways feeling the cessation of the benefi- 
cent work of the forests. 

As the population of the world grew denser and 
man discovered his relation to the trees, and that the 
performance of their primal duty had been fatally 
interfered with, he began to bring back the forests, 
a Herculean task now being performed over the 
whole of the Old World. What has happened to 
Europe is beginning to happen to us. Already the 
cry of the farmer is heard and the complaint of the 



APPALACHIAN NATIONAL PARK 27 

manufacturer. Man has menaced the existence of 
the forests without stopping to consider the conse- 
quences. 

The debt that we of the New World owe to our 
forests is apparent when we remember that the 
products of the tree alone occupy the fourth place as a 
source of wealth to the nation, to say nothing of the 
many and invaluable uses of forested land. As civil- 
ization advances and all the secrets of the earth are 
opened up, as new discoveries are made and new forces 
harnessed and put to work, the tree becomes more 
necessary instead of less. Its wood enters into every- 
thing, or if it is displaced in one industry it becomes 
more necessary in another, one of the latest discov- 
eries causing the destruction of such enormous quan- 
tities of wood that one stands aghast before the facts : 
for the worst menace to our forests to-day is the all 
consuming paper-pulp mill, the most reckless tim 
ber-cutting known to history being done in its serv- 
ice. This danger, which threatened the extinction 
of our forests with frightful rapidity, is now to an 
extent being met by the manufacturers themselves, 
some of whom, realizing the extremity to which they 
will soon be brought under existing conditions, are 
beginning to provide for their own future by reforest- 
ing the cut-over lands. But even at the best the 
tremendous demands of the pulp-mills are believed 
to be a menace to the forests of the nation, and 
we should be made more unhappy at the prospect 
ahead if it were not for our experience with other 
threatened dangers, bogies like the diminishing sup- 



fm- ^^ 



28 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

ply of nitrates, mineral fuel, and phosphates which 
darkly haunted the imagination a short time ago 
only to vanish before the searchlight of science. 
Even now the form of the giant bamboo is hovering 
on the horizon, and If the stately Oriental or our own 
cornstalks do not feed to repletion the voracious 
maw of the paper-mill, hope assures us that some- 
thing else will arrive to do It before our grand forests 
have sent their last sigh over the valleys and moun- 
tains of the New World. Which distant hope does 
not lessen our present responsibility ; and It Is consol- 
ing to know that the whole country Is waking up to 
the need of preserving our forests before It is too 
late, vigorous and effective means having In many 
places already been taken to that effect, state law 
and the growing Intelligence of private owners 
combining to place large tracts of woodland under 
the care of trained foresters. 

How many of us realize that well within a genera- 
tion there have been created more than one hundred 
and fifty national forests in the United States, em- 
bracing over one hundred and ninety million acres? 
Besides this a dozen states have already adopted the 
policy of creating state forests, and as proof of the 
vital Interest taken In the subject, more than a score 
of universities and colleges are now providing courses 
in forestry. The public schools are also beginning to 
give instruction In the underlying principles of for- 
estry, thus preparing the future citizens of the 
nation. Indeed, who to-day can escape knowing the 
meaning and value of the forests ? Even the Southern 



APPALACHIAN NATIONAL PARK 29 

mountaineer is seeing a new light. The appearance 
of gullies that ruin his land, the washing-away of his 
soil, the drowning of his valleys, the drying-upof his 
life-giving springs, these things he is beginning to 
notice with consternation and to ask the reason why, 
so that the race will soon have passed to which be- 
longs the man who recently declared that in his 
opinion the people would be better off if there was 
not a tree on the mountains. Of course what he saw 
in imagination was a land covered with grain-fields, 
but he is discovering that the destruction of the trees 
is not followed by fertile acres; in short, that his 
beloved mountains were not designed by nature for 
grain- fields. 

The inaccessibility of the Southern mountains long 
saved them, and now, thanks to the new impulse, 
the Southern Appalachians will escape, to an extent, 
at least, the most serious dangers of lumbering, 
though they can no longer escape the lumber- 
man, who is swinging his axe on the most "inaccess- 
ible" coves and peaks of the Great Smokies them- 
selves, "the largest lumber company in the world" 
having recently purchased an enormous tract of two 
hundred and fifty thousand acres of virgin forest in 
the North Carolina mountains, forests containing, 
besides spruce and hemlock, some of the finest hard- 
wood trees ever grown here, notable among which 
are tulip and cherry, the latter having long since 
been removed from the more accessible forests. But 
fortunately this lumber company, in its methods of 
handling the trees, belongs to the new era. Under 



30 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

its administration there will be no waste. Those 
great piles of sawdust left by the old-time sawmill, 
as well as all other remainders, will be converted at a 
central station into electric power to run all the mills 
and factories from which the waste is produced, 
besides leaving some to help run the enormous pulp- 
mill recently erected in the Pigeon River Valley, a 
few miles west of Asheville. The use of electricity 
in running the machinery vastly reduces the danger 
from fire, as does also cleaning up the waste in the 
woods, while yet more to diminish the danger the cut- 
over forests are to be under the care of a fire guard. 
While the new conscience is thus working in priv- 
ate ways, the people as a whole have become alive 
to the importance of saving certain parts of the long 
Appalachian watershed from the possibility of denu- 
dation ; hence there has grown up so urgent a demand 
for a national forest in the East, comparable to those 
forests with which the West for various reasons is so 
amply provided, that a bill has finally passed through 
the United States Congress making the foundation 
of such a domain possible. This, the Weeks Bill, be- 
came a law March i, 191 1, and now there is in 
process of construction a great forest reservation, 
part of which is to be in the White Mountains of 
New Hampshire, part in the mountains of Mary- 
land, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North 
Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, and whose 
function shall be forever to protect the cradles of the 
great rivers that are born on the slopes of these 
mountains. 



APPALACHIAN NATIONAL PARK 31 

The largest and most important part of the 
southern division of the new national forest will lie 
in the mountains of North Carolina, since from them 
are thrown off as from a common centre the princi- 
pal feeders to many of the great rivers , that cross the 
southern plains to the Atlantic on the east, and run 
to the Ohio and the Gulf of Mexico east of the 
Mississippi River on the west. 

The first purchase made after the passing of the 
Weeks Bill was in North Carolina, where in Decem- 
ber of 191 1, eighteen thousand, five hundred acres 
of land in the district of Mount Mitchell on the 
watershed of the Catawba River became the nucleus 
of the Southern Appalachian National Park, for the 
immediate further extension of which lands are 
under consideration in the Nantahala, Mount 
Mitchell, and Pisgah areas. 

The coming of the national park means more than 
the preservation of the forests ; it means the opening 
of a glorious pleasure-ground in the eastern part of 
our continent, how glorious a pleasure-ground no one 
can know who has not climbed these flowery slopes 
so exquisitely warmed by the sun and cooled by the 
wind. The more stupendous aspects of nature are 
wanting here. Those majestic snow-clad peaks, 
those abysmal gorges, those rocks of blazing hue, 
those geysers and natural bridges, those strange 
geological formations and petrified forests, — all 
those marvels of a younger age that call the world 
to our Western parks, — no longer any of them exist 
here, for these ancient mountains, the oldest in the 



32 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

country, perhaps in the world, have passed through 
the wonder stages of geological youth and moved on 
into the calm old age of mountain life. 

But the older mountains have beauties of their 
own, and our new park can offer attractions that the 
parks of the West, where nature has wrought in so 
dramatic and expansive a mood, cannot offer. For 
one thing, nowhere else is nature so friendly. The 
world is beautiful, with here and there touches of 
grandeur, and one may traverse the fragrant forests 
alone and without fear. Nor is it necessary to make 
long and extensive preparations to explore these 
ancient heights : it is enough to start out with a tiny 
knapsack and walk away, sure of a welcome wherever 
night overtakes you. There are great free spaces of 
forest, mountains, and sky, but at intervals there is 
always the clearing and the home of the settler, the 
most hospitable of created beings, and to the student 
of human nature one of the most interesting. Even 
in the widest reaches of the park, the home of the 
mountaineer will be found in some intruding cove 
or little valley, while there are no sweeter camping- 
grounds in all the world than those offered by this 
exquisite country of flowers, fragrances, cold springs, 
and cool summer nights, not only to the robust 
hunter and fisherman, but as well to frailer lovers of 
nature. 

But the new park, large as It doubtless Is destined 
to be, after all will cover but a small portion of the 
mountain region, and finally it is the people them- 
selves who must keep the country beautiful. And 









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APPALACHIAN NATIONAL PARK 33 

this the canny mountaineer will do as soon as he 
recovers from his ancient fear of the forest and 
learns the new value of the tree. Among the most 
ardent workers for the passing of the Weeks Bill and 
for the Appalachian Park appropriation have been 
natives of these mountains, men of intellect and cul- 
ture who have thrown all their strength into the 
contest, and who are still working for the good of 
the forests. 

The primeval forests must go. The older trees con- 
tinually go anyway, for, excepting those marvels of 
our Far West, the trees grow old, die, and fall. But 
they need not go all at once, and under intelligent 
care new forests may take the place of the old so 
continually and so skillfully that we need not be 
conscious of the passing of the ancient groves. 
Every one owning land in these mountains should 
remember that it is also the sacred and inalienable 
right of the tree to bestow beauty on the landscape, 
and that the law reads: "Blessed is he who saves a 
noble tree or preserves a grove on the mountain-top." 

The lumberman, upon coming to a monarch of 
the forest so placed that it could survive the removal 
of the trees about it, should look at it with the eye of 
prophecy and pass by, leaving it to delight those who 
are on their way to the mountains, that vast army of 
pleasure-seekers whose coming will open up every 
beauty spot in the wilderness and also bring to the 
inhabitants of these noble heights a material wealth 
vying with that in the forests themselves. In these 
days of fast-moving events every feller of trees in the 



34 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

North Carolina mountains ought also to exercise 
the functions of a landscape gardener. No one asks 
that great tracts of primeval forest be kept for sen- 
timent, but one does ask that certain portions of 
exceptionally beautiful tracts lying along the most 
frequented routes of travel be hedged about by 
some protecting power. 

Moreover, on the slopes of those ridges that stand 
at imposing or beautiful points of view, the trees 
should be kept to preserve those picturesque sky- 
lines so characteristic of these mountains and which 
are disappearing with startling rapidity. It is asking 
too much that we wait a hundred years for the trees 
to grow again before we can enjoy the pictures that 
have made the mountains in their early days so 
enchanting, and the destruction of which brings, 
comparatively speaking, so small a return. It is easy 
to cut a big tree, but we must wait a century or two 
to get it back again, and who of us can afford that? 

The genius of man has overcome the uttermost 
defenses of nature, and to-day the triumphant saw- 
mill shrieks and devours in every stronghold of the 
mountains. The high places, the birth-chambers 
of the rivers, have struck their colors before the 
advance of the enemy. The sceptre has long since 
fallen from the hand of the red man. His successor 
roams the forest for pleasure, and also puts it to a 
thousand uses the aborigine did not so much as 
dream of; but the wisdom of the invader is such that 
he can if he will use the forest and yet preserve it, 
strengthen it, enhance its beauty, and increase its 



APPALACHIAN NATIONAL PARK 35 

efficiency while even curtailing its area, and he will, 
let us hope, transform our Southern mountains with 
the intelligence of his higher reason, supplanting the 
charm of wildness with the grace of beauty. Thus 
the triumphant forests will continue to fold these 
ancient heights in their protecting mantle, they will 
beckon the rains to come, and steady the long rivers 
that flow to the sea. 

Lovely, indeed, are the forests. 



V 

HOW SPRING COMES IN THE SOUTHERN 
MOUNTAINS 

IT comes slowly, which is its unique charm. In 
the North the spring holds back, then comes 
with a rush, tumbles its treasures in a heap at your 
feet, and is gone. Here the spirit of the South pre- 
vails, and the spring gradually unfolds for three 
months, rising in a strong, slow tide that finally 
breaks over the land in a tremendous flood of color 
and fragrance and song. 

As early as February the alders wake up and shake 
out their tassels. Small, dark-purple violets peep 
out from the dead leaves of the woods. The deli- 
cious fragrance that comes and goes you quickly 
trace to the clumps of brown-capped, purple little 
flowers of the Carolina pine-sap that are pushing up 
everywhere in the woods. The tops of the maple 
trees kindle to fire, and the colors of the leafless twigs 
everywhere begin to brighten. 

As March draws near, that illusive spring feeling 
gets into the air, and that odor of spring that so 
powerfully exhales from nothing in particular. The 
peeping of frogs is heard, and up the wind come the 
voices of the people unconsciously singing the uni- 
versal hymn of spring. 

The trees are suddenly alive with birds. They, too, 



HOW SPRING COMES 37 

have felt that monition of spring in the air, and are 
on their way from the Far South to the Far North. 
Flocks of robins and bluebirds appear as by magic, 
then, along with other flocks that have spent the 
winter with us, they vanish, off, no doubt, to build 
their nests in more northern climes. 

The chickadee, the titmouse, the nuthatch, the 
junco, the pine warbler, and many another lovely 
guest that has fed from our porch railing all winter, 
now share with flocks of migrants that remain with 
us a few days at a time. Birds on all sides are ecstat- 
ically singing. What marvelous outpourings come 
from that most joyful of songsters, the Carolina 
wren! Suddenly a new note is heard in the chorus 
that has broken out everywhere, the veery has dis- 
covered the coming of spring. A flock of song spar- 
rows alighting in a budding tree-top all begin to sing 
at once, until it seems as though the tree had sud- 
denly blossomed out in a bouquet of song. New life 
thrills the cardinal bird, who pours forth love-notes 
as he flashes, a streak of fire, through the air. Finches, 
tanagers, creepers, chats, woodpeckers, — birds, 
red, yellow, blue, and green, show like flowers among 
the trees, some to pass on, some to remain with us 
through the summer. 

The peach trees have burst into bloom, and on 
the ground in the woods you find clusters of pink- 
tipped buds and a few white blossoms peeping out 
from the evergreen leaves of the arbutus that car- 
pets the woods In places. This is the beginning of 
a procession of flowers that might bewilder one in a 



38 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

more hasty climate, but here there is also opulence 
in the matter of time. There is no hurry. The "pret- 
ties," as the children here call all flowers, will linger 
day after day, week after week. Anemones, trilliums, 
ginger, eyebrights, violets, adder's-tongue, blood- 
root, hepaticas, all one's old friends have suddenly 
appeared as well as many a lovely stranger. All 
one's old friends would still be here if one came from 
the South instead of the North, for these mountains 
are a centre for the flora of the different sections of 
the country. 

There are certain flowers whose coming marks an 
era in spring itself, not because of their size or bril- 
liancy, but because of some inherent quality that 
charms. Such a flower is the Iris verna. One thinks 
of the irises as inhabiting wet places, but not so 
this one, which grows everywhere in the dry woods, 
so charming a thing that having seen it one ever 
after associates it with the beauty of these forest 
floors. You watch as eagerly for the first iris as for 
the first arbutus. It is only three or four inches high, 
its color a clear amethyst blue, and besides being 
so lovely to look at, it is perfumed like a hothouse 
violet; that is to say, the variety with a touch of 
orange-yellow near the centre is so perfumed. There 
is one with a white centre, more delicate in color and 
contour than the other, a dream of beauty as one 
looks across gardens of it on some mountain-side, 
but it has no fragrance. 

With the Iris verna appears the bird's-foot violet, 
also in the dry woods and pale violet-blue in color. 



HOW SPRING COMES 39 

Poised on a long stem with its lovely face held up 
to the sky, this large calm violet lends peculiar 
charm to the woods among the grays and delicate 
young greens of the forest floor. 

While the irises and violets are yet in bloom the 
heavy buds of the pink azaleas slowly expand, the 
scales open, and airy flowers emerge in bright clus- 
ters that light up shady corners in the woods and 
brim the forest with their faint, refreshing fragrance. 
Like all the rest they linger long. There is no hurry. 

About the time that the pink azaleas begin to 
open, the earliest of the rhododendrons — those that 
tapestry the damp walls of the ravines with patterns 
of twisted limbs and thick evergreen leaves — be- 
come embroidered with clusters of blush-rose and 
cream-white blossoms. 

But there are other signs of spring than the coming 
of birds and flowers. As the season advances, the 
dark tracery of the trees becomes intermingled with 
many colors as young leaves bud out of the stiff twigs 
and rival the flowers in beauty. As you now look 
off at the mountains, new colors appear among the 
dark pine trees. Pale green creeps daintily up the 
ravines proclaiming the awakening of the tulip- 
trees. Budding hardwood trees everywhere mingle 
delicate shades of pink and yellow and silver-white, 
soft greens, and bronze-reds, with the dark green of 
the pines. The forest is transformed, it gives the 
impression of one wreathed in smiles. The tide of 
life is rising strongly though yet slowly. 

The mountains, most of the time enveloped in a 



40 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

soft haze, seem far away and unreal. The air is 
saturated with odors distilled from the earth and the 
tree- tops; fragrance streams as it were from the 
pores of things, and the aroma of the budding for- 
est ascends like incense from the earth. 

Although the early spring is so ethereal in its 
beauty, shortly after the blossoming of the peach 
trees a remarkable change takes place in the general 
coloring of the landscape. The first delicacy and 
tenderness are for a time replaced by emerald green 
and other greens so strongly tinted with yellow as to 
need all the weight of the darker pines and the more 
sombre of the hardwood trees to tone down the 
vividness of the coloring. Pictures made at this time 
are laughed at and called impossible by those who 
have not been here to see how much gayer the real- 
ity is than any brush could paint. Yet above all 
this riot, the forest, serene and enchanting, smiles 
like a sedate mother at the gay spirits of her children. 
In course of time these brilliant hues tone down 
and blend together. 

As the season advances, the earth puts forth 
blossoms more and more freely. Those banks of snow 
that fill whole ravines, those white ghosts that glim- 
mer in the woods, are the white-flowering dogwood 
trees in bloom. Those rifts of rosy red along the ra- 
vines and on the slopes are the close-set blossoms 
of the Judas-tree or red-bud that open at just this 
moment as though to heighten the effect of the snowy 
dogwood. The pines wake up with the other growths. 
They are always green, it is true, but they have 



HOW SPRING COMES 41 

something in reserve for spring, every plume be- 
coming tipped with fresh color as the petalless 
flowers, and later the groups of young needles, push 
out to the light. With the severe forms of the pines 
thus wreathed in garlands of spring, the transforma- 
tion of the woods is complete. 

Throughout this enticing season it is impossible 
to stay indoors. Household cares by some divine 
alchemy are transmuted into unimportant details 
of the real life. Urgent business, it is discovered, 
can just as well wait until to-morrow. There is no 
hurry. The real duty of the moment is to walk 
abroad, or drive, or ride a gentle horse through the 
mazes of the awakening world. Wherever one goes 
flowers greet the eye, violets, pinks, saxifrages, col- 
umbines — flowers familiar and flowers new. Gay 
butterflies are dancing about them like flowers with 
wings, and bright birds are singing everywhere. 

You climb the mountains to look for orchids and 
lilies and other rare blossoms. And many a time you 
traverse the lovely Pacolet Valley at the foot of 
Tryon Mountain, not only to see the flowers, but 
because of the delicate beauty that crowns it as a 
whole. For with its gentle, inclosing mountains, 
with the wonderful light filling it to the brim, with 
the exquisite colors that in the early morning and 
towards night, and at certain times even at midday, 
seem to convert the solid substance of the earth into 
an enchanting dream fabric, it is one of those crea- 
tions of nature that have given us our poetic fancies 
of super-earthly beauty. And it was here, in the valley 



42 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

at Lynn, that Sidney Lanier, who sang with In- 
spired soul of the dawn he so loved, of the trees, 
the marshes, the sky; — it was here in the beautiful 
valley that America's most tuneful poet "waited for 
the dawn " through that last night of pain on earth. 

As you go about in the season of flowers, you can 
trace the water-courses by the white foam of the 
silver-bell tree standing close-ranked, every twig 
and branch fringed with delicate white bells. And 
when you approach a ford or a stream you may see 
the earth hidden under the dainty little shrub 
yellow-root with its charming foliage and its lace- 
work of small purple-brown flowers, a plant whose 
decorative value is well known to the landscape gar- 
dener, who masses it along his roadways and under 
his trees, but which perhaps he may not always 
know is a monotypic genus, its only species being 
found along the eastern side of the New World ; — 
according to the botanies, though the wiseacres will 
shake their heads at this, and point a prophetic 
finger across the globe to the Celestial Empire that 
to-day is so fast giving up its many hoarded secrets. 

That waft of refreshing fragrance comes from the 
fringe-bush whose loose clusters of lacy white flow- 
ers you see on the opposite bank. What is more sig- 
nificant than this dainty and exquisite thing growing 
securely on the wild mountain-side? And how came 
it here when all other members of its family live 
in that remote Chinese Empire so mysteriously 
connected with us through the life of the plants? 
What was the bond that united us in past geologic 



HOW SPRING COMES 43 

ages? And what tore those tender flowers asunder, 
separating them by continents and vast seas? 

When blossom the blackberry bushes that crowd 
into every cleared spot and border the paths and 
the roads, it is worth while going out just to see 
them, though it would be impossible to go out 
without seeing them, for the hedgerows everywhere 
are white like banks of snow. At their blooming- 
time in April or early May comes a cold storm called 
the "blackberry-blossom storm," as a similar spell 
of bad weather in the North when the apple trees 
are out is called the "apple-blossom storm." 

About Traumfest the blackberry has a rival in 
the Japanese honeysuckle, that, having escaped from 
the gardens, densely covers banks and open places. 
Red clay evidently suits it. It buries a stone wall 
or a fence in a year or two, blossoms tremendously, 
and loads the air with its delicious perfume. But 
out in the woods you will find a wild honeysuckle 
as lovely and as fragrant as its Japanese cousin and 
with blossoms greatly resembling it, reminding us of 
that mysterious relationship between the plants of 
the East and the West ; only it is less importunate 
than its imported relative, it does not smother the 
earth, but twines about the bushes in a modest 
manner, and its beautiful white flowers have richer 
tones of yellow and are sometimes flushed with pink. 
The red trumpet honeysuckle, loved by every child, 
also twines about the bushes on the mountain-side 
in company with other beautiful and fragrant mem- 
bers of the same family. 



44 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

The heavy curtains of leucothoe that hang over 
the water-courses have become embroidered with 
long white flower spikes. And walking at higher 
levels you will come across the little umbrella-leaf 
with its uplifted head of white flowers. You might 
not notice it among the wealth of more striking blos- 
soms all about you, but you will never pass it un- 
heeding when you remember that there is only one 
other known species of its family, and that that 
one opens its flowers in far-away Japan. 

If interested in these curious relationships, you 
will find on these mountains many a modest flower 
whose genealogy is inextricably intertwined with 
the flowers of the Orient. In this mysterious sister- 
hood is the wistaria that so often adorns our homes 
and which is most closely connected in our thoughts 
with Japan, which we Imagine ever wreathed in 
wistaria blossoms, as we see them twining about the 
screens and the drawings that come from that far land 
to us. It is the Japanese wistaria we cultivate and 
with which we are familiar, though we ourselves 
have one member of this very ornamental family. 
You will come upon our wistaria sometime in your 
wanderings in the lower mountains, where it will 
be seen climbing the trees and covering them with 
its mantle of leaves and its myriads of close bunches 
of purple-blue flowers, a charming thing whose 
day among the petted darlings of the garden doubt- 
less yet will come. 

Of course, growing everywhere over the moun- 
tains, though more abundantly and of larger size 



HOW SPRING COMES 45 

in the higher mountains, is the highly prized galcix, 
whose silky round leaves, green in summer, and rich 
wine-red in winter and spring, have taken the fancy 
of the city florist, sometimes to the discomfiture of 
the collector, who gets large orders for wine-red 
leaves in the summer from haughty florists who can- 
not be induced to believe that red galax leaves, like 
red currants, have their season. One can have no 
idea what a really charming thing the galax is until 
one sees it thickly carpeting the woods. And what 
one never discovers, from seeing it in the stiff circles 
with which it surrounds the city nosegay, is that in 
the early summer it sends up all over the forest 
floor dainty white flower spikes. It, too, has its 
mystery and its romance, for who can doubt, learn- 
ing that it is classed as a monotypic genus of eastern 
North America, that it has its kinsfolk across the 
earth, beckoning us to recognize the relationship 
between the races we look upon as our antipodes? 

Huckleberries soon begin to blossom, but prettier 
than the flowers are the little bright red leaves that 
add so much to the color of the forest floor in early 
spring. And there is the sparkleberry, whose pale- 
green, neat-looking bushes are all a-dangle with 
little snow-white bells crowded as close as can be on 
their slender, swinging stems, precursors of the pale- 
green berries that make a great show because there 
are so many of them. The people sometimes make 
jelly of these berries, amazing jelly as bitter as gall. 

Important and beautiful as are all these flowers 
and budding leaves, the woods do not quite belong to 



46 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

you until you have found something in them to chew. 
Then they are yours in an intimate and peculiar 
manner. This desire to taste is doubtless a survival 
of the child in us that we never quite outgrow. When 
we go into the woods we in a sense revert to a more 
primitive state, and the sight of sassafras excites the 
gustatory nerve. Sassafras is abundant. It blossoms 
like a burst of sunshine along the edges of the yet 
leafless woods, each of its bare branches terminat- 
ing in a pretty amber ball of delicately fragrant 
and fringe-like flowers. There is nothing prettier 
than sassafras with the sun behind its blossoming 
twigs. One recalls a sassafras grove on a mountain 
slope that seemed to have been purposely planted, 
the trees were so regular in size and position, but the 
poor soul who owned it said it was a potato-field, 
and that the harder he tried to root out the sassa- 
fras the better it grew. We who do not depend upon 
sassafras-land for our potatoes love the aromatic 
plant whose roots, stems, leaves, and flowers yield 
a pleasant fragrance as well as a pleasant flavor to 
those who have not outgrown their youthful habit 
of browsing in the woods ; and whose history has also 
its finer flavor of romance, since the sassafras exists 
as a single species in the eastern part of the New 
World, while one other species has been found in 
China. 

With the sassafras one often finds its near relative 
the spice-bush, whose botanical name is Benzoin, 
because of its fragrance, and whose pungent, cam- 
phor-flavored bark is also pleasant to the taste. 



HOW SPRING COMES 47 

There are seven known species of the spice-bush, 
two in the eastern United States, the others in Asia. 
Another shrub that belongs to us and eastern Asia 
and that tempts one to nibble is what the people here 
call "sweet bubbles." It appears in old-fashioned 
Northern gardens under the name of sweet-scented 
or flowering or strawberry shrub, but every child 
who has warmed the stiff, maroon-colored flowers 
in his hand — and what child has not? — will tell 
you instantly that "sweet bubbles" is the prefer- 
able and proper name. The mountain children warm 
the sweet bubbles in their hands, but they do not 
have to go to a favored corner of some garden to 
find one. They can pick a bushel of them along the 
roadside within a stone's throw of the house. Like 
the sassafras, the sweet bubby is spicy to the core ; 
leaf, root, and branch possessing an agreeable flavor. 

" Horse sugar," the only North American member 
of its family, which otherwise lives in South America, 
Asia, and Australasia, is another early blossoming 
shrub whose flower clusters of little close-set balls 
of yellow fringe are fragrant and whose bark is aro- 
matic. Its sweetish leaves, which the people say 
horses like to eat, have given it its popular name, but 
the botany, scorning frivolity, christens it Symplocos 
tinctoria. 

Of course sap that has exuded from the pine tree, 
when it hardens to just the right consistency, af- 
fords never-failing solace to children of all ages who 
belong to the woods. Then there are the tips of the 
pine twigs that leave such a clean and pleasant 



48 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

flavor In the mouth. We wanderers of the earth 
enjoy the forest with all our senses, and with its 
fragrance, its colors, its sounds, and its sweet juices 
we seem also to imbibe something of its freshness 
and its greatness. 



VI 

THE CARNIVAL 

THE early flowers are only the prelude in the 
floral drama that reaches its climax when the 
mountain laurel, the flame-colored azaleas, and the 
rhododendrons come upon the scene. Their appear- 
ance converts the earth into a spectacle difficult to 
imagine, and although the outburst is so prodigious, 
there is no hurry, it is sustained, hanging suspended 
as it were in almost equal intensity for a month or 
more. It takes place in the lower mountains in 
May, in the higher ones, in June and July. 

One gets the first hint of what is coming when, 
driving up a certain mountain near Traumfest, one 
sees the snowy drifts of the dogwood through a 
veil of bright red-bud in the misty ravines; that 
mountain from whose side one looks down to where 
beyond the hills the lowlands spread, reaching like 
a summer sea to the far horizon, — the lowlands that 
wherever visible give an illusion of the sea that is 
sometimes wonderfully real, distance lending a 
misty blue to the level landscape out of which roll 
lines of hills like breakers white-crested with smoke 
or mist or "deadenings." A log cabin shaded by a 
large weeping willow rests in a hollow on the moun- 
tain. Fig trees and rose-bushes grow about it, and 
a spring of cold water gushes out of the ground. From 



50 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the back door a winding path leads across a tiny 
"branch," across a hillside and across a hollow. 
Here while the dogwood is yet in bloom, one gets a 
glimpse of the flames that are presently to set the 
mountains ablaze. This first sight of flame-colored 
azaleas can never be forgotten. You come suddenly 
upon great clusters of flowers that blaze forth in a 
splendor that quickens the pulse. It seems incredible 
that anything could come to such perfection of 
beauty in the rude environment of the mountain- 
side where so many plants struggle together for life. 
Even the celebrated azaleas of Ghent, the pride 
of the hothouse, pale before the marvelous beauty of 
these wild growths. 

All flowers are imprisoned sunshine in a figurative 
sense, but of no others does that seem so literally true 
as of these. They appeal to the imagination as deli- 
cate flames incarnate. Each bush has its own colors. 
Before you stands one whose blossoms are the color 
of flames, beyond it is a bush clad in crimson bloom, 
and there behind the bright-green leaves of young 
trees one sees a blaze of scarlet. Orange-yellow 
shading to pale flame glows on the edge of the hollow; 
a regal bush blossoming with the gold of ripe lemons 
stands a little apart; as you look up the near hillside, 
your eye is caught by wonderful bronze tints, by 
shades of pink, and elusive pale-rose tints. In this 
arras of exquisitely blended colors, soft shadows 
lying on the petals yet more mingle their hues 
together. 

You feel as if something important had happened 



THE CARNIVAL 51 

as you turn away from this your first view of the 
flame-colored azaleas in their native soil. You have 
a sense of possession and gratitude to the generosity 
that thus presents to you, not a laboriously culti- 
vated plant in a pot, or even a great bed in a coun- 
try garden, but a mountain-side of incomparable 
flowers as free as the air. 

The road up Rocky Spur at the time of the carni- 
val of flowers is a succession of pictures where 
blossoming bushes are grouped at every turn. Over 
the slopes above you and the slopes below, between 
the straight tree-trunks and the leafy boughs, 
wherever the eyes rest, glow these flames of the 
azaleas. When you reach the central ridge, the high 
knife-edge top of the mountain where you can look 
off both sides, you see not only the landscape of 
mountain and valley immersed in the soft light, those 
far blue spaces and that near mingling of green foli- 
age, but you have at your feet rolling down the 
southern slope of the mountain such a wave of bloom 
that suddenly seen makes you catch your breath. 
This is the end of the road, and leaving the carriage 
you go down the mountain-side into the sunny cham- 
bers of the forest luminous with blossoms that In- 
close and embrace you. Above your head hang clouds 
of gold, at your knee press billows of flame, all about 
you are great globe-like clusters of these incompar- 
able flowers. 

You look towards the mountains that lie to 
the south, height upon height, the near ones green 
above with intense blue shadows towards their bases, 



52 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the more distant ones a sweet, mystical blue, and 
you know that on all those slopes far and near are 
blazing the same fires that illumine the earth 
about you. Being thus close to the flowers, you can- 
not help noticing the exquisite texture of the petals, 
their great size, the symmetry of each flower and 
of the large clusters, as well as the ornamental shape 
of the bushes with the young leaves piercing through 
the bloom here and there in green points. It is the 
texture of the flowers and their width — some of 
them are almost round — that gives them that charm- 
ingly expansive, one might say luscious, efi^ect. The 
petals are so delicate that the light seems almost to 
shine through them. These wild azaleas of the South- 
ern mountains lack the somewhat dense effect of 
the well-known cultivated plants, and when trans- 
planted to parks and gardens they lose something of 
their sumptuousness, their wonderful clearness and 
richness of coloring, and to an extent their exquisite 
texture. They lose their aspect of dainty wildness 
and become as it were citified. 

To see the perfect fire of the azaleas you must come 
to their mountains. They may be found from south- 
ern New York to Georgia, but only in the high parts 
of the Southern mountains do they attain perfection. 
Although the azaleas are so widespread as a family, 
why is it that this species with fire in its veins lives 
only here and in the Far East? The Himalaya 
Mountains, like the mountains of Carolina, have 
their slopes adorned with these tremendously glow- 
ing flowers that gave to the gardens of Europe their 



THE CARNIVAL 53 

choicest azaleas long before these of the New World 
were known. 

To find these azaleas one must ascend the moun- 
tains, for they do not grow as low down even as 
Traumfest. When they are in bloom, we visit the 
Warriors for certain hollows, we go up Tryon Moun- 
tain because of certain slopes, we frequent the wild 
heights of Hogback and Rocky Spur. We warm our 
senses for a month in the fire of the flowers, and then 
if we like we can go higher up — and enjoy it all 
over again. In the higher mountains the azaleas 
are more abundant than here, though they are no 
more beautiful, for that would be impossible. When 
those noble heights beyond the Blue Ridge wreathe 
themselves in flowers, one finds whole mountain- 
sides aglow, for where the trees have been cut off, 
fiery azaleas oftentimes cover the wounded earth. 
The open spaces are resplendent beyond words, one 
sees acres of flower-flames ablaze on the slopes. These 
close-crowding bushes in the cleared places are low, 
laying a stunning carpet of color over the mountain- 
side, but in the woods they grow tall, and you see them 
on all sides glowing in the shadows and burning in the 
sunlight. The outbreak of color is almost overwhelm- 
ing, and one is grateful for those intervening spaces 
where are no flowers. From a world of exciting colors 
one passes into the cool and peaceful green of the 
forest, presently to turn a curve in the road and find 
the slopes again on all sides in furious bloom. 

Thus for a season the earth is transfigured, the 
mountains on all sides are burning with flames that 



54 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

do not destroy. The spectacle is on a grand scale; 
one can wander over thousands of square miles en- 
compassed by flowers ; — beyond the limits of North 
Carolina these unconsuming flames have spread over 
hundreds of miles of the ridges and spurs of the 
Southern Appalachians, so that one seems to get 
lost even in thinking of it. The people call these 
azaleas "yellow honeysuckles," and get tired of them. 
The azaleas flaming throughout the forest are like 
great music, great poetry, great pictures ; they strike 
too high a note for the lives of the people. Such 
fervor wearies their unaccustomed nerves, and they 
turn for consolation to a calmer expression of the 
great renewal. 

For the flame-colored azaleas, marvelous as they 
are, form but a part of the flood of bloom that rolls 
over the mountains. About the time they appear, 
the fair and restful Kalmia latifolia, or mountain 
laurel, begins to open. The mountains here are green 
with kalmia — or laurel, as one prefers to call it — 
as the hills of the North are green with grass. When 
the forest is burned over, the mountain laurel rushes 
in and competes with young pine trees for the soil. 
It grows in impenetrable jungles in the ravines and 
along the water-courses. Where grown in the open 
and safe from fire, it attains great size, there being 
laurel trees about Highlands and elsewhere as large 
as ordinary apple trees. Generally, however, it 
appears as bushes from three to fifteen feet high that, 
annually covering themselves with bloom, light up 
the mountains from end to end. Standing waist- 



THE CARNIVAL 55 

high on a level of low-growing laurel, the bushes con- 
cealed by the heavy billowing masses of bloom, you 
seem to be afloat on a sea of flowers. 

The laurel freely covers the lower as well as the 
higher mountains. It wrapsTraumfestas in a man- 
tle. Who does not know the ' * laurel path ' ' that winds 
through an otherwise impenetrable thicket? Over 
this path in the blossoming season you wade, as it 
were, through a flowery labyrinth that opens to let 
you pass and closes behind you as you follow the 
winding way. Masses of bloom lightly touch your 
cheek, or graze your shoulder, tall bushes loaded with 
blossoms close over your head — you pass under an 
arch composed of flowers. You look through an open- 
ing in the bushes that surround you, and the slope 
below you is covered with a carpet of rosy-white 
bloom. In Traumfest some of us go out to see the 
laurel as the people of Japan go out to see the cherry 
blossoms. You climb Melrose to be buried in laurel 
bloom. You ascend heights that you may look down 
upon the earth hidden under flowers. Again you 
drive along the upper edge of a ravine that runs for 
miles bank full of laurel blossoms. 

The air is pervaded by the bitter-sweet smell of 
the flowers. The ground is white where the cups 
have begun to fall — or perhaps it is red, for there 
are bushes that bloom year after year as red as a 
rose, and others that clothe themselves in a gar- 
ment of delicate pink. There are also those whose 
bloom is as white as snow, the crisp and upright 
cups scarcely pricked with the red dot that marks 



56 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the anther pockets so conspicuous in some of the 
laurel. 

Nothing is more charming than a laurel cup with 
the anthers on its recurved filaments still hidden 
in the little pink pits that indent the inside of the 
corolla in a circle. These curved and captured sta- 
mens, pretty traps to force invading insects to bear 
away pollen on their wings, at the slightest touch 
spring back and curl up at the centre of the flower 
dusting the intruder, and you, passing among the 
laurel, are sure to be dusted with little pellets of 
pollen bombarding you on all sides. And the cups 
themselves! Scalloped on the edges, shaped and 
decorated like tiny afternoon-tea cups, who does not 
know and love them! There is something familiar 
and homelike about laurel, and it is easy to under- 
stand why the people prefer it to the azaleas. Like 
the New Englander they call it "calico-bush," a 
comfortable name suggesting Sunday starch and 
fresh young girls. And here, as in New England, 
the laurel is also known as "ivy," the name laurel 
being here bestowed upon the lordly rhododendron. 

The mountain-laurel and the flame-colored aza- 
leas, though both so abundant, do not interfere with 
each other. There is room on the vast surface of 
the mountains for both. And while a zone of flower- 
ing azaleas belts the mountains, just below it or in- 
terrupting it or claiming intruding ravines is the 
tremendous calm sea of the blossoming laurel. 

As though the marvelous outbreak of the azaleas 
and laurel were not enough to express the joy of life 




A LAUREL PATH 



THE CARNIVAL 57 

animating the earth, the rhododendrons open their 
regal buds. No one would think of calling the rho- 
dodendron a "calico-bush"! It belongs by every 
line of its stately foliage and more stately blossoms 
to the aristocracy of plant life. Its thick, glossy, 
evergreen leaves, much larger than those of the laurel 
and darker in color, its tall growth and crooked stems 
make it a noticeable and very decorative presence 
even when not in bloom. At the elevation of Traum- 
fest the greater rhododendrons do not grow, only 
those smaller, early blossoming ones whose more deli- 
cate forms and exquisite pale-pink or white blos- 
soms grace many a ravine and roadside bank. But 
on the higher mountains the slopes and ravines are 
often impassable because of the dense growths of 
rhododendrons, the king of which is the Rhodo- 
dendron maximum, that sometimes becomes a tree 
forty feet high, though more often it is a large 
shrub. 

Smaller than this, seldom reaching a height of 
twenty feet, and very abundant on many of the 
mountains, is the Rhododendron Catawbiense, or 
mountain rose-bay, blooming earlier than the other, 
its large clusters of lilac or purple or sometimes rose- 
red flowers making one of the most showy spectacles 
of the carnival season, particularly as it chooses open 
places and the summits of the mountains to display 
its colors. How many mountain scenes one recalls 
made glorious by this splendid shrub, and perhaps 
nowhere does it give more pleasure to the eye than 
where it stands in groups on the long and beautiful 



58 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

slopes of the Grandfather Mountain, those southern 
slopes sweeping down and down into the foothills 
of the John's River Valley. One of the finest roads 
in the mountains crosses this southern front of the 
Grandfather, winding through the forest and over 
the open places, keeping for many miles an elevation 
of about four thousand feet. It is in every sense a 
high place. The air is clean and cool and fragrant; 
in the distant spaces lie fair valleys and noble moun- 
tains, while close about you the mountain rose-bay 
enchantingly colors the earth. The effect of these 
masses of bloom on the grassy slopes against the 
blue sky is lovely. 

The color of these flowers varies a good deal, all 
the way from rich purple-red to a clear, sweet rose- 
color. Some people condemn the flowers as "ma- 
genta," seeing only that among all the colors they 
assume. But there are occasions when even this 
despised color can ravish the senses. Up near the 
top of the Grandfather Mountain, for instance, one 
should see the purple rose-bay against the blue- 
gray rocks in the quivering blue atmosphere of a 
summer day to find out how glorious a thing a ma- 
genta flower in its right setting can be. 

As the mountain rose-bay passes, the great wax- 
like flowers of the Rhododendron maximum come 
forth out of the heavy bud clusters. The Rhodo- 
dendron maximum generally grows in ravines or 
along damp slopes, where it makes jungles of trop- 
ical luxuriance. Its large flowers, which are usually 
white or a delicate peachy pink, grow in clusters 



THE CARNIVAL 59 

like the flowers of the other rhododendrons, and 
though the Rhododendron maximum does not bloom 
so profusely as the laurel, the sight of the high wall 
of a ravine tapestried with its large dark-green leaves, 
in which the great flower clusters gleam out, is 
something to remember. The regal Rhododendron 
maximum is not so exciting as the flaming azalea, 
not so home-like as the laurel, nor so theatrical as 
the mountain rose-bay, but it possesses a degree of 
dignity and elegance belonging to it alone and that 
distinguishes it among all the forest growths. 

There are several species of the rhododendron 
found in different parts of the mountains, among 
them the charming little Rhododendron Vaseyii 
that, unlike the other rhododendrons, sheds its 
leaves in the fall. It wassaid at one time to be extinct, 
but this is not true, as any one knows who, early in 
the season, has seen the cliffs on the north side of 
the Grandfather Mountain brightly colored with its 
rosy bloom. 

The azaleas, laurels, and rhododendrons, although 
so abundant in the Southern mountains, are by no 
means confined to them, some species being found 
throughout the whole Appalachian system from 
Canada to Georgia. One recalls certain New Eng- 
land pastures that are mantled in laurel, while the 
Rhododendron maximum occurs locally as far north 
as New Hampshire. The red-blooming mountain 
rose-bay begins its course in Virginia, making a won- 
derful show in the Cumberland Mountains, as all 
will recall with pleasure who have passed through 



6o THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the Cumberland Gap in its blooming season. And 
the flame-colored azaleas, as has been said, light 
their fires as far north as Southern New York, 
though they do not burn with the brilliancy and 
variety of color anywhere else as here where they 
so wonderfully set the slopes of the mountains 
ablaze. 

To the mountaineer all things are admissible that 
serve his ends, and one is horrified upon first coming 
to find him burning rhododendron and laurel wood 
because, he says, they make a hot fire good for 
cooking. Think of cutting down for such a purpose 
a rhododendron or a laurel tree with a trunk thick 
enough to be split into four sticks of wood ! Familiar- 
ity with the country, however, modifies this horror. 
When there is rhododendron enough to get lost in, 
one can afTord to burn a little now and then. 

With the passing of the azaleas, the laurel, and the 
rhododendrons, the fervor of the blooming season 
here subsides, and it is then that one being in Traum- 
fest often goes down to a certain stream over which 
a bridge unites two cornfields. At either end of this 
bridge on the edge of the water grow large azalea 
bushes different from the others. These now begin to 
put forth, not pink nor flame-colored azaleas, but 
snowy white blossoms with a strong and spicy frag- 
rance that carries one back to certain New England 
swamps where one learned to love and watch for 
these fragrant things. These are the last of the 
azaleas down below and the only white ones. But 
there is a species of white azalea up on Toxaway 



THE CARNIVAL 6i 

Mountain and elsewhere, closely resembling this 
of the brookside, though it grows on the dry slopes, 
yielding the same delicious fragrance. It may be 
said in passing that sweet-fern, dear to the heart of 
every one familiar with New England pastures, also 
grows on Toxaway, Pisgah, and other of the high 
mountains. What a turn it gives one to see it here 
unexpectedly and to smell its incomparable odor, an 
odor that more than any other revives slumbering 
memories. 

But these fragrant white azaleas are like the epi- 
logue at the end of the play. When the gleaming 
petals of the Rhododendron maximum fall away, the 
curtain has dropped on the Carnival of the Flowers, 
and spring moves on into summer and fruitage. 



VII 

SUMMER IN THE MOUNTAINS 

AFTER the reckless profusion of spring, what is 
left for summer in the matter of flowers? 
There is indeed nothing to match the early display, 
yet the summer is not flowerless, and it has a beauty 
of its own in the fruitage that overwhelms one for a 
time. 

One notices how vines are everywhere twining 
and climbing, — festooning the trees, overlaying 
the bushes, tying the tall weeds together, clematis 
here, woodbine there, smilax, trumpet-vine, so many 
vetches, so many pretty vines whose names one does 
not know, — how they cling and climb and riot in 
luxuriant life! Everywhere along the ravines the 
forest trees are hung with the strong cables of the 
grapevine, whose foliage mingles inextricably with 
that of the tree it mantles, and whose delicious 
fragrance loads the air about the time the little 
white urns of the persimmon tree fall to the ground 
brimmed with delicate perfume. 

We find six kinds of morning-glories choking up 
our vegetable garden in August. We have given up 
all hope of vegetables, but we go out in the morning 
to rejoice in the glory of the usurper. Those vines 
with star-shaped leaves that run over garden and 
fields, fairly carpeting the earth in places, are pas- 



SUMMER IN THE MOUNTAINS 63 

sion-flower vines, as you would know from the won- 
derful flowers that cover them. Think of red earth 
numbering among its weeds the great blue disks of 
the passion-flower. Your garden is a riot of bloom- 
ing weeds, so that you cannot see anything else. 
Everything except the vegetables has grown as 
though possessed. 

Not that all this marvelous growth even of weeds 
is without its difficulties. There are caterpillars. 
Besides these, many other hungry insect guests of 
the summer appear as if on purpose to cut short the 
mad career of the plants — sometimes with ludicrous 
abruptness. But these incursions seem generally to 
take place after the plant has accomplished the 
maturing of seeds enough to weed down the earth 
another year. 

Now from the depths of the woods comes the voice 
of the " moaning dove," as the negroes call it, whose 
frequently uttered coo — 0000 — 00 in the hot, still, 
summer days fills the heart with an indescribable 
sadness and longing, and the wood thrush yet heralds 
and closes the day with its ringing notes. At the 
faintest hint of dawn one hears a clear, soft refrain. 
Like the morning prayer of the Arab that passes 
from tower to tower, the song of the thrush Is caught 
up by bird after bird until the air throbs with song. 
This lasts until the sun is shining, when the ecstatic 
hymn to the dawn ceases. 

Yet silence does not reign when the birds stop, for 
the insect chorus, that began in the spring with weak 
chirps and trills, has swelled to a deafening shout 



64 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

that ascends as the sun goes down, stops suddenly 
before dawn, only to be renewed, though less vocif- 
erously, by other insects during the day. Cicadas 
spring their rattles and whirr past in startling prox- 
imity to your face, and when the "seventeen-year 
locusts" swarm out on Tryon Mountain, you must 
needs shout into the ear of your companion as you 
drive through the forest vibrating with their shrill 
voices. It is almost as noisy as a storm at sea, and it 
is hard to understand how these hordes happen to 
have their seventeen-yearly anniversary so often. 

But excepting for the locusts on Tryon Mountain, 
the turmoil of the day is nothing to that of the night. 
One wonders who they all are, those strident-voiced 
myriads hidden under the leaves. Above everything 
else rise the insistent cries of the katydids, while out 
of the woods come all kinds of purrings, and squeak- 
ings, and trillings. Those little meteors that trail 
through the bushes are fireflys, as are also the rap- 
idly moving constellations of stars that gem the 
treetops. 

Always in summer a voice rings out as the sun 
goes down, and continues chanting its wild refrain 
all night and every night, until stilled by the cold of 
winter. Whip-poor-will ! whip-poor-will I — some- 
times you will hear half a dozen of these tireless 
vocalists performing at once. 

Another voice of the night is the soft, tremulous 
call that comes down the aisles of the forest when 
the sun sets and the little downy owls come forth. 
The owl, it is said, puts the night to evil uses, catch- 



SUMMER IN THE MOUNTAINS 65 

ing and eating the birds and despoiling their nests of 
eggs and young; but whoever has heard the many 
sweet cadences, the crooning, caressing tones of these 
flufify, nocturnal revelers, will be convinced that 
the chief occupation of the owl at night is the pursuit 
of happiness. Sometimes far away, deep-toned, and 
mysterious comes the hoo — 000 — 000, hoo — 00 of the 
great horned owl, and you, listening, can easily be- 
lieve that he at least is up to mischief. You do not 
often see the owls, but sometimes walking in the 
woods at dusk a shape will float past noiseless as a 
disembodied spirit. 

In the higher mountains there are no mosquitoes, 
and there used to be none at Traumfest in those 
good old days before the stranger had begun to "im- 
prove" the place. The summers of Traumfest are 
sweet beyond words to express and the thermometer 
goes no higher here than in the North, — not so high 
very often, — and the nights are cool ; but the hot 
season lasts longer, so that those accustomed to five 
or six weeks of midsummer heat sometimes grumble 
when they get four months of it. But no one who 
has not spent a summer here can hope to know what 
these woods are capable of in the way of sweet smells. 

All the mountaineer does these days is to "work 
the corn" with a cultivator, if he happens to have 
one with the necessary adjunct of a mule; or other- 
wise with a slow hoe. Sometimes he does not work 
it, and complains of the result. The corn crop looks 
like a joke to the newcomer accustomed to corn in 
other regions. "What are you doing? " was asked of 



66 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

a boy busy in a field of young corn so sparse as to 
excite mirth. The boy looked up, and cheerily re- 
plied, "Oh, I am thinning the corn." And so he was! 
When the corn has been properly thinned, you will 
find but one stalk to a hill and the hills far apart, 
excepting in the river bottoms where the showing is 
better. Man ploughs the corn, but woman often 
hoes it, she and the children. The children begin to 
hoe at the age of eight, and you will often see them 
busy in the fields, both boys and girls — but it is not 
necessary to pity them, for they like it. 

The cornfield is ever present in the landscape, not 
only covering the valley bottoms, but lying precari- 
ously on the steepest slopes surrounded by the forest. 
Beans are often planted with the corn, where they 
climb the convenient stalks, but it is the corn one 
sees, and the corn which gives that odd domestic 
touch to the wild scenery of the Southern mountains. 
For corn is not only the principal food of the moun- 
taineer, but supplies as well that important bever- 
age, variously known as "corn- juice," "moonshine," 
"mountain-dew," "blockade," " brush whiskey," and 
in the outer world, ' ' corn-whiskey, ' ' which is extracted 
from the grain and surreptitiously distributed. 

Fortunately this important crop is able to defy 
the rigors of the summer and conquer, with man's 
help, the overwhelming army of weeds — or flowers ; 
for many of these wild growths could be called 
"weeds" only by a soulless farmer regardless of 
everything but crops. 

As summer advances, the compositae begin to 



SUMMER IN THE MOUNTAINS 67 

carpet the fields with cloth-of-gold, and tapestry 
the hedges with gay colors, but the summer flowers 
are as nothing compared to the procession of fruits 
that, beginning in the spring with strawberries, lasts 
throughout the hot season. Strawberries at Traum- 
fest are ripe in May, and so are cherries, — what 
there are, for the cherry does not flourish here; and 
no sooner does the fruit turn red on the few trees 
lovingly watched by their owners than there appear 
upon the scene a large and happy flock of cedar wax- 
wings, for no sHght reason named "cherry-birds." 

When the procession of fruits is fairly started, you 
will have hard work to keep up with it for a few 
weeks. About Traumfest plums, peaches, peaches, 
peaches, berries, the most delicious of grapes, — 
Traumfest is noted for its grapes, — apples, — such 
as they are, — figs — and melons! Wagonloads of 
watermelons stand about waiting, not in vain, for 
customers. You know the approach of the melon 
season from the vanguard of empty rinds lying along 
the roadside. There is no trouble getting at a melon. 
All you need do is to "bust it open," root into the 
crisp, pink, and juicy interior with your hands, and 
go ahead. This the negro children do, lacking a 
knife, and you will see them, tears of pure delight, as 
it were, streaming from the corners of their happy 
mouths. The Southern watermelon! What other 
fruit ever bestowed such joy on humankind. To see 
a Carolina negro camped down before a big water- 
melon is to see what the philosophers try to make us 
believe does not exist, — a perfectly happy mortal. 



68 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

How we do revel in ripe fruit! And then — all of a 
sudden — the procession has passed. The seemingly 
endless abundance stops short. You realize with a 
sort of anger that it has gone. Why did you not eat 
more? Why did you not pickle, preserve, can all 
those vanished blessings tenfold more than you did? 
It seemed as though such abundance could never 
end — and now — ! 

But it is not quite ended. If you look over those 
fields where, in spite of the efforts of the farmer, the 
great blue passion-flowers bloomed all summer, you 
will see leathery-skinned fruits as large as a goose 
egg lying about by the basketful. These are may- 
pops. If you break open a thoroughly ripe one, you 
will be assailed by an aroma that makes you think of 
tropical fruits, of perfumed bowers, of Arabian 
Nights banquets, of fairy gardens, and strange 
tropical flowers. Inside, the maypop resembles a 
pomegranate, but the patrician pomegranate has no 
such heavenly flavor as has this wild and worthless 
maypop. What our fruit-makers are thinking of 
not to cultivate the maypop, one cannot imagine. 
It offers possibilities that ought to tempt them be- 
yond the power of resistance. In some parts of the 
mountains the people call themaypops "apricots" 
and eat them, though they belong principally to the 
age of childhood. These strange, exquisite, good-for- 
nothing fruits are the product of the passion-flower 
vine. 

Later than the cultivated grapes, about the time 
of the maypops, come the wild grapes, among them 



SUMMER IN THE MOUNTAINS 69 

the large sweet muscadines that the country children 
bring in by the bushel. These come on the edge of 
autumn, but before the summer is over there is yet a 
unique and gorgeous display in the plant world that 
cannot be ignored. It is not flowers this time, though 
as the summer nears its end, the ground blossoms 
out in the most extraordinary manner. What are 
those large gold plates lying in the woods? Those 
exquisitely yellow, or orange, or pink or purple disks, 
those masses of coral, red, yellow, or ivory-white? 
Those pearly or snowy caps? Those enormous frills 
and those smoky little buttons? Ah, yes, they are 
the mushrooms! How many shapes and sizes and 
colors spring up in a night! Sometimes they are 
beautiful and sometimes they are not. But they are 
always amusing, as though trying to tell us to take 
all this fuss and fury of the fruits and flowers calmly, 
or even somewhat as a jest. "After all, what mat- 
ters it?" they seem to say; "they are gone and here 
are we, just as gay and twice as funny"; and they 
roll up or straighten out into all sorts of shapes. They 
break the spell of the flowers and fruits, as it were, 
and put one in mood for the next great event, the 
vivid and most tender splendor of the autumn. 



VIII 

AUTUMN 

SLOWLY Autumn kindles her torch. Here and 
there a yellow leaf shows among the green. Then 
comes a premonitory softening of the whole land- 
scape. Then colors, almost as dainty as those of 
spring, creep over the earth, so slowly that time and 
again you decide there is to be no great display this 
year, when, some warm November day, you look out 
to find the world transfigured. 

The difference between the autumn coloring of the 
North and of the South is that there it is brilliant, 
while here it is tender. There the hardwood trees 
blaze, here they glow. The reds that here so wonder- 
fully emblazon the book of nature have a peculiar 
delicacy and softness of tone that give a character of 
its own to the landscape. As the oak leaves deepen 
to wine-red, the dogwoods turn exquisite shades of 
old-rose and pink, and the sourwood adds its ruby 
splendor. The tall pyramidal forms of the sweet- 
gum, mantled in dark purple or deep reds touched 
with orange, add depth to the color-tone of the 
forest, or its leaves turn yellow, — and sometimes all 
these colors mingle together on the same tree. A 
sweet-gum in autumn dress with the sun through it 
fairly takes one's breath. Sassafras points the 
woods with thrilling spots of scarlet, orange, and 



AUTUMN 71 

red. Sumac burns in the hedges, while huckleberry 
and other bushes crimson the ground. 

Mingling with the reds, or apart by themselves, 
are the clean yellows characteristic of this region. 
Tall tulip-trees stand in the hollows and along the ra- 
vines with crowns of gold. Hickories and beeches add 
their yellows and browns, and the chestnut oak, when 
other oaks are red, keeps up the pretense and turns 
golden-brown, the color of fading chestnut leaves. 

The whole world is at times immersed in a light 
that strangely enhances its beauty. Is it smoke that 
makes those intensely blue spaces under the trees? 
The forests have not yet begun to burn, only the 
people are burning brush here and there. The color 
seems to be in the air itself. The very tree-trunks 
often look blue, the delicate, mystical blue of the 
Blue Ridge Mountains. 

One wakens day after day to transports of color. 
Out of each window a new scene constantly unfolds. 
The sun shines in to you through a tent of red and 
yellow leaves that incloses the house, and the moun- 
tains seen through them take on intenser tones of 
rose-color and blue, of purple and peacock green. 
The mountain slopes far and near at this time seem 
hung with an arras from some enchanted loom. The 
splendid colors of the hardwood trees are interwoven 
with the sunny plumes of the pines, while here and 
there the twisted crown of an ancient pine tree is 
drawn in strong lines against the glowing back- 
ground, while golden sunlight sifts and quivers 
through it all. 



72 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

Slowly the autumn draws on, and slowly it passes, 
lingering as lingered the coming of spring, sometimes 
sustaining its flames well into December. Indeed, 
there are splashes of crimson remaining all winter, 
for which one has to thank the horse-brier, the most 
exasperating plant that grows, but to see it in mid- 
winter festooning the young trees and the bushes 
with its trailing wreaths of fire is to forgive it every- 
thing. If you go down to the brookside in Novem- 
ber, supposing the flowers are gone and the winter at 
hand, you wall meet with a pleasant surprise. Those 
deep blue spindles standing upright among the fallen 
leaves are closed gentians, more graceful and of a 
deeper, purer blue than the closed gentians of the 
North. 

When the leaves are taking on their autumn 
colors, the cornfields turn to gold, and men, women, 
and children go out to "pull fodder," an occupation 
that in the meadowless regions, and to an extent all 
through the mountains, takes the place of haying, 
and, consistently, is less arduous. The stripped-off 
leaves and the cut-off tassels are hung up to dry on 
the yet standing stalk in the crotch made by the ear 
of corn, or sometimes in the crotch of a convenient 
tree. And that is all there is to it. 

When the fodder-pullers have finished their work 
and the dried fodder has been "toted" home, the 
cornfield for a time presents the most extraordinary 
appearance in its history. It suggests a company of 
pygmies, each standing erect with his pack over his 
shoulder, for the heavy ears of corn turn down and 



AUTUMN 73 

are all that Is left on the stripped and beheaded 
stalks. Throughout the mountains these absurd 
cornfields are a feature of the autumn landscape, 
lying on the slopes, covering the valley bottoms, and 
appearing without warning in the midst of an other- 
wise unbroken forest. The Northern visitor some- 
times compares them, to their disadvantage, with 
other cornfields of his acquaintance, where noble 
stacks stand in even rows, great golden pumpkins 
scattered over the ground between. But what he 
does not consider is that such a cornfield would be 
out of place here, and the golden pumpkin might 
strike a false note. Pumpkins there are, it is true, 
but they are pink, thus failing in one of the most 
important functions of a pumpkin. A pink pumpkin ! 
But It would do very well if called by some other 
name; that is, as an ornament, for you can by no 
means make good pies out of a pink pumpkin, 
"pumpkin pie" remaining the unchallenged treas- 
ure of the North. 

In course of time the ear of corn also disappears 
from the bereft stalk, it is " toted " home and husked, 
then a part is shelled and the white and wrinkled 
kernels ground into the sweetest meal In the world, 
between the slow stones of little mills that stand 
along the water-courses. If a man is successful in 
life and owns "right smart of corn-land," he will 
likely have his own mill, though It may be no larger 
than a good-sized chicken coop, with perhaps a 
wooden wheel, taller than itself, on the outside, a 
wheel that turns slowly and with dignity, the silver 



74 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

water dropping from the broad paddles in a miniature 
cascade. The miller in the smaller mills is sometimes 
a woman in a sunbonnet, but running the mill is 
not very hard work, since it often consists in pouring 
the corn into the hopper, then going away for a few 
hours or all day, and coming back in the fullness of 
time to take the sweet meal from the box below the 
leisurely stones. 

Besides the cornfields there are those frequent 
fields of something that "imitates corn a right 
smart," as the people say, but which is only sorghum, 
from which in the fall the mountaineer extracts 
molasses for home consumption. Sorghum is a pic- 
turesque crop from first to last. When the slender 
stalks have been cut, the juice is expressed from 
them in sugar-mills simpler even than the corn-mills. 
Between two cogged wheels the long canes are fed 
by a patient man sitting on a log, while the wheels 
are turned by a patient mule at the end of a long 
beam, walking forever round and round and going 
nowhere. During this process the family is generally 
grouped about the mill, while the vat into which the 
sweet juice runs is the scene of tragic deaths, as into 
it crowd bees, flies, and wasps greedy for a share of 
the harvest. Near the cane-mill, and like it standing 
in the open air, is a large pan under which a fire is 
built and in which the juice is boiled — bees and all. 
Standing over the caldron is a man enveloped in 
clouds of steam as with a long pole he stirs the bub- 
bling sweet. In a short time "them molasses" is 
done. Sorghum cannot be reduced to sugar, or, if it 




THE SORGHUM-CUTTER 



AUTUMN 75 

can be, it never Is here in the mountains. It is put 
into jugs and provides the principal "sweetening" 
of the family. 

Man is so close to the soil here that he recognizes 
the relationship. He sees his bread — and molasses 
— come directly from the earth. He loves the land, 
and the ambition of every youth is to possess a little 
farm of his own. In the wild forest he clears a place, 
plants the corn, cultivates it, watches it grow, 
gathers in the harvest, grinds the meal and makes 
the bread, most of these things being done in the 
open air. And there is no hurry. He feels the sun 
and the wind, he looks into the forest and is not 
afraid, neither is he unhappy. The cornfield is 
almost the boundary of his desires. He sells corn, or 
its equivalent in "blockade," for money with which 
to supply his needs. He fattens his pigs on corn and 
with it feeds the poultry. The mule and the horse 
eat corn, knowing no other grain. It is fed to them 
on the cob, since shelling corn for an animal able to 
shell it for himself would be a waste of time. 

Although the corn is the hope of the farmer, one 
sees an occasional oat- field, and sometimes a field of 
wheat or rye, but these seem to have been sown for 
the purpose of beautifying the landscape, the red 
soil showing through the scattering blue or green 
stalks with pleasing effect. In some valleys of the 
higher mountains these grains may be raised with 
profit, but on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge 
corn is the safer crop; although the people have a 
beautiful faith in the possibilities of their land, one 



76 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

farmer proudly saying of his venture in wheat, ' ' There 
never was no better-headed wheat on earth, what 
there was of it — but there wa'n't none." And these 
fortunate people are as cheerful under failure as 
they are hopeful of success in impossible conditions. 
"What you doin' up there, Dicky?" your driver 
calls out one day derisively to a man gathering an 
almost invisible crop from a hillside. "Nigh about 
nothin'," Dicky cheerfully responds. 

Autumn is not wholly devoid of fruits, though 
about Traumfest summer claims the greater share 
of those that elsewhere belong to the later season; 
maypops linger on, and when their time is past there 
comes the triumphant harvest of the autumn, which 
harvest also belongs to winter. Persimmons are 
ripe ! — a crop that never fails. When the autumn 
woods are in their glory, the persimmon tree is cov- 
ered with a glory of its own, every twig being loaded 
with little flattened globes, salmon pink in color and 
covered with a bloom that in the shadows is deep 
blue. But be careful of these tricksy fruits, for pretty 
as they are, they may not yet be perfectly ripe, and 
until they are, nobody — not even the most longing 
negro — shakes a tree, for the pucker of a green per- 
simmon is such as to set even the teeth of memory on 
edge. When ripe they begin to fall, and when you 
find a treeful of good ones, for there is great choice in 
persimmons, you will know why the negro loves 
them so. 

Inseparably connected with the persimmon in 
one's mind is the 'possum. For the 'possum loves 



AUTUMN 77 

the 'simmon as the nightingale loves the rose. Of a 
dark night he may be found sitting in the tree among 
the ripe fruit. He gets fat on 'simmons, and acquires 
that peculiarly rich and delicate flavor so highly 
appreciated by the negro. All through the hunting 
season you are wakened by the excited bark of the 
'possum dog, accompanied by the wild yells of the 
negroes and an occasional gunshot. The 'possum 
dog, like the poet, is born, not made. You can never 
know what dog will develop genius in this direction, 
excepting that you may be sure it will be one of pure 
mongrel strain. The 'possum dog is no beauty, but 
he is worth his weight in 'possums, which is the same 
as saying he is a very valuable dog. 

There is no denying that fat 'possum is a dish for 
the gods. If you live in the South you will doubtless 
some day bake a fat 'possum, that is to say, you will 
bake it, figuratively speaking, for the actual task 
must be performed by a generous, genial black cook 
who loves 'possum. She bakes it con amore, and with 
sweet potatoes. The memory of one's first 'possum 
dinner lingers like a happy dream. After eating 
it, one does not wonder at or blame the negro for 
spending night after night in the woods — to the 
detriment of his day's work — in hilarious quest 
of the fat 'possum sitting among the persimmons, 
— the fatiguing, happy, and exciting hunt to have 
the sequel of "baked 'possum and sweet taters." 

Baked 'possum is the Christmas goose of the 
epicurean negro, and as the season moves on, the 
voice of the 'possum dog is heard in the woods assist- 



78 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

ing in the preparations for that season of high Hving 
and neglect of work which is the negro's perquis- 
ite, inherited by him from the days of slavery. 
"Christmas" about Traumfest does not mean a 
niggardly twenty-fifth of December ; it means that, 
and all the days following, until sunset of New 
Year's Day. To be fair, however, one must add that 
in these modern, trying times, the week-long holiday 
is very much interrupted by daily labor. It is a fic- 
tion more than a fact, yet it no doubt adds a certain 
feeling of festivity to the day's work, a feeling that 
one is somehow having an extra good time, though it 
might be hard to tell just where to put your finger 
on it. 



IX 

IS IT WINTER? 

IT is winter, according to the almanac, and the 
dates on the Northern newspapers that come regu- 
larly and too often. For the newspaper is a sort of 
inverted anachronism here where Hfe is a good half- 
century behind the times. Why waste the golden 
hours reading things that by the time we catch up 
with the world will have been happily forgotten by 
everybody? The leaves have fallen, but it does not 
look like winter, the laurel is so green on the slopes 
and the pine trees are so sunny, while the uninvited 
mistletoe burdens the oaks with its pale-green form. 
Birds are singing — the wren always believes it will 
be summer to-morrow, and comports himself ac- 
cordingly. The air acquires a sparkling quality, with- 
out wholly losing its softness. 

The native people speak of the coming of winter 
as a calamity, and you, too, half dread the cold that 
is to pinch, and yet does not come. But one day it 
does come. The wind howls, the air is icy, and your 
blood chills. You fill the fireplace with logs, and re- 
sign yourself to the inevitable. But in three days you 
are out without a hat. How warm the sun, how deli- 
cious the air ! And was there ever such color on the 
mountains! One has a rare surprise in this color of 
the winter mountains. They remain so warm and 



8o THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

tender. They are drowned in light, and assume the 
marvelous pale blue which is unlike the blue of other 
mountains. But sometimes they are lilac, and blue in 
the shadows, or they are white and blue. They some- 
times look white through the trees, a pure gleaming 
white with intense blue spaces, though there is no 
snow on them, only a shimmering light as though 
they were giving back the sunshine absorbed by 
them through the long summer. It is in the winter 
months that one gets that glow on the mountains, so 
tempting and so illusive to the painter's brush, when 
towards night you often see the southern slopes 
tinged with the pink of the wild rose, again warm 
lilac or deep red, while the sky and the earth that 
inclose them are sympathetic shades of blue and 
gray. It is nearing Christmas and Christmas berries 
are blazing in the thickets. Down the Pacolet Valley 
rustling canebrakes are green and gold, while golden 
sedge-grass spreads over slope after slope, its silky 
white plumes trembling in the breeze. 

In our drives about the country we soon discover 
why the people dread the winter. It does not take 
very cold weather to make one shiver over an open 
fire, when the house walls are open to every breeze 
that blows and one's clothes are not winter-proof. 
One never sees a winter wood-pile in this country, 
and as to "filling the cellar," with the ant-like thrift 
of the New Englander, it is undreamed of. There 
are no cellars, neither the quality of the land nor the 
climate lending itself favorably to cellars: one rea- 
son, perhaps, for dreading the winter. Corn-pone, 



IS IT WINTER? 8i 

dried beans, and salt pork must get somewhat 
monotonous, even to those who love them. Store- 
houses are almost as rare as cellars, and is one to 
deprecate or envy a state of mind that enables people 
cheerfully to sell their corn in the autumn at thirty 
cents a bushel, with the certainty that they will have 
to buy it in the spring at eighty cents? 

We take advantage of each soft and sunny day, 
as though it were to be the last. It is yet December, 
so the calendar says, but along the roadside one sees 
a maze of sunny, yellow petals, the witch-hazel defy- 
ing the season. Gay red berries are falling from the 
trees, and little bushes are crowded with coral beads. 
The holly tree, decked with scarlet, stands with its 
toes in the rippling brook. Jack-oak leaves glow 
tremendously, and crimson horse-brier makes gay 
splashes against the evergreen pines. 

When Christmas comes, the people celebrate with 
firecrackers, and sometimes they have fireworks at 
night, — rockets, pinwheels, Roman candles. But in 
the remoter places there is no Christmas. Santa 
Claus has not been discovered, and the day passes 
without notice. 

Days come at last when you resign yourself to 
endless cold, but presently the sun bursts out in a 
fury, and your blood seems to feel a thrill of spring. 
This is premature, however, January is not spring; 
and we are smartly reminded of that when, one day 
amidst howling winds, the air is filled with snow. 
The ground now is white. How cold we are ! How 
exasperating these tumultuously blazing open fires 



82 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

that roast you on one side while you freeze on the 
other ! One resigns one's self with as good a grace as 
possible to the cold of a Southern winter, against 
which one is so defenseless, when you discover that 
a change has come. The snow is all gone. You are a 
little surprised, and crestfallen, to find that the ex- 
treme cold you grumbled so about has lasted just 
three days. Sometimes there comes a day of witch- 
ery, when the flakes are large and soft, and there is no 
wind. Softly, swiftly, the white mantle covers the 
earth, shrouds the trees, the green bushes, and the 
tall, brown weeds. How lovely is the pine forest at 
such a time! Enjoy it while you can, for by night 
fairyland will have vanished. 

Thus the snow comes and goes. In the high 
mountains, it comes earlier, and stays longer, but 
you will not find any noticeable preparation for 
winter. Even the sleds you sometimes see are used 
to haul wood in summer. 

Days of fury are followed by days of sweetness 
and warmth, when walking leisurely about you won- 
der at the size of the laurel and azalea buds and the 
buttons on the dogwood trees. These things keep 
on growing as though they did not really believe in 
winter — and what is that? A large gauzy-winged 
grasshopper leaps up and sails away at your ap- 
proach. As you watch the light on the wings of 
these insects that dart up one by one before you, as 
you look over the green forest shining in the warm 
sun, you forget where you are; for a moment you 
think it is summer. The wren has evidently made 



IS IT WINTER? 83 

the same mistake. There is hardly a winter day se- 
vere enough to still his happy song. And whenever 
there come those frequent warm days that cause the 
sap to stir in twigs and hearts alike, you hear the 
joyful outpourings of other birds, those wintering 
here, or those belonging here. It is only January, 
but the red-bird has begun to whistle — indeed, 
there is not a month in the year when some bird is 
not singing a joyous song; and when February comes 
no bird holds back any longer. 

When the ground freezes, or snow comes, the 
birds confidently draw near to the houses, and at 
many of them they find a table always spread. Over 
on her ridge the dear lady from C. beckons you to 
come on tiptoe to the window, and see the hermit 
thrush in the food-box — and there he is, whether 
you can believe such a thing or not. Another bird- 
lover, whose back door opens into beautiful spaces 
bounded by the not too distant form of Tryon 
Mountain, has also persuaded the hermit to conquer 
his shyness, and feed from her stores. 

Birds that, according to the books, do not belong 
in this part of the world, are frequently seen and re- 
corded by eyes always on the watch. Thus are cap- 
tured — in the records — many a stray wight. 

There is one bird, however, here that never comes 
near the houses. One sees him drawing marvelous 
lines in the sky, rising and floating, circling about 
and about in the vast spaces of the air on apparently 
motionless pinions. What is it that thus sustains 
the incredible flight of the buzzard? What is the 



84 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

secret of the illimitable wing of this lonely spirit of 
the sky, whose companions are the clouds? As you 
sit on a log, some winter day, absorbed in watching 
the buzzard wheeling in the sky, you become con- 
scious of something moving on the ground, and look 
down in time to see a striped chipmunk whisk be- 
hind a stump. Again, your unsuspected companion 
may be a gray squirrel who betrays himself by a 
quick motion, as he flirts his bushy tail around a tree- 
trunk to get out of sight. Squirrels are no longer 
abundant here, they have been hunted so remorse- 
lessly, but in the fall the gray squirrel comes in com- 
panies to harvest the nuts of your trees, — or, may 
it be, only for a little excursion out into the world? 
The shy little red squirrel who hides in the depths 
of the woods is known as the "mountain boomer," a 
name also derisively applied to the mountaineer by 
his low-country neighbors, whose own title, equally 
descriptive one supposes, is "tar-heel." 

Another rodent, abundant but seldom molested, 
is the pretty little flying-squirrel, whose form may 
sometimes be seen at dusk bridging the space be- 
tween one tree-top and another, like a miniature 
aeroplane. He is a gentle little creature, but a sad 
rascal, who hides by day and chases up and down 
between your walls at night, coming into the house 
and gnawing to pieces whatever excites his admira- 
tion, though he never deigns to taste your food. 
Although a nuisance, he is better than rats, which, 
the people say, never come to a house occupied by 
flying-squirrels. Of course the common rat is here as 



IS IT WINTER? 85 

elsewhere, but he is not very abundant, and his 
place is sometimes taken by the comical wood-rat, 
whose curious habits are not destructive to anything 
but your nerves, until you find out the cause of those 
eerie noises that render the night uneasy. 

The chipmunk is all too easily tamed, but, what 
we plume ourselves upon as a rare occurrence, we 
once had a family of woodchucks living under our 
porch. They came out at dawn, like so many little 
bears, and we watched their clumsy yet sinuous 
movements through the flowers, and we saw them 
sit up and with their hands draw down our best 
pinks and eat off all the blossoms. 

If gray squirrels are not abundant, rabbits are. 
Hunting does not seem to thin their ranks. You 
often see a bright round eye turned square upon you, 
as you are walking through the woods. It belongs 
to Molly Cottontail, sitting under a bush, as still as 
a mouse, with that great eye sentinel over a danger- 
ous world. If you pause or leave the path, she is off, 
a vanishing mist of gray fur. There are rabbit paths 
everywhere in the bushes, so that one must needs be 
careful, and not stray away into these curious high- 
ways of the furry folk that go nowhere that man, or 
dog, can follow, but lead the unwary into thickets 
of bushes tied together by prickly vines. Close to 
the ground the little path tunnels its way, but one 
would need be as small as the rabbit to follow it. 

There are places where one, watching quietly at 
night, can see the rabbits at play. And when snow 
is on the ground, who but they make those double 



86 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

tracks that everywhere line the woods, usually ac- 
companied by the prints of a dog's foot, the dog him- 
self visible to your mind's eye in frantic but useless 
pursuit! How ridiculous Molly Cottontail can make 
poor doggy appear! In the woods you hear him 
barking excitedly as he runs — then across an open 
space drifts a fluff of fur. After it, some distance 
behind, comes the dog, not resembling in the least a 
fluff of fur, and not drifting. The contrast between 
the desperate efforts of the jointed dog, and the fleet 
farewell of the little vision floating off ahead, appar- 
ently without effort, makes one laugh in delight. 
All winter you can hear the whining cry of the hounds 
as they course about, hunting for their own amuse- 
ment or accompanied by a man with a gun. Other 
tracks in the snow are made by the birds : — here 
has passed quite a flock of quails, and here has gone 
hopping along — a robin, perhaps. 

You are still in a state of defense, waiting for and 
dreading the winter that comes, and yet does not 
come, when one day you find the alders in bloom! 
And then, walking in the woods, there comes a sud- 
den, cinnamon-like fragrance, sweet, spicy, and 
clean. You would say flowers were blooming some- 
where near. And there, indeed, under the trees is a 
little bunch of brown-capped, rosy blossoms — the 
Carolina pine-sap that scents the winter woods like 
a breath of spring. 

After this there will undoubtedly be cold days 
and cold storms that will drive you into the chimney 
corner, but between these short, cold spells how hot 



IS IT WINTER? 87 

the sun ! — and who can believe In winter, seeing the 
alders in bloom ! Besides, the birds, one might say, 
are also in bloom. You thought they sang all winter, 
but when you hear them now — well, you need no 
further assurance that the winter is over and gone. 
Yes, the winter is behind you, and you suddenly 
realize that you have spent nearly all of it out of 
doors, and, although a Northerner and a skeptic, 
you begin to believe in the sun. 



X 

CiESAR'S HEAD AND CHIMNEY ROCK 

THERE are two places on the eastern side of the 
Blue Ridge that one, being at Traumfest, 
should visit: Caesar's Head, that grand promontory 
of the Blue Ridge that at one commanding point 
holds back the tumultuous sea of foothills beating 
against its base, and Chimney Rock, one of the 
gentlest and most charming little valleys one 
could wish to know. Each lies a long day's drive 
from Traumfest, one to the south, the other to the 
north. 

The way to Chimney Rock lies through valleys of 
corn and along sunny slopes where the cotton grows, 
for one of the advantages of Traumfest is that from 
it you can step down into the cotton country that 
begins at the foot of the Blue Ridge. The Northerner, 
whose eye has never swept a cotton-field during the 
changing seasons, imagines that its only moment of 
interest is when the picturesque negro is gathering 
the harvest. He does not know that the cotton, like 
the peach, is a flower as well as a crop, the starry- 
leaved plant bearing large lemon-yellow and rosy- 
red hibiscus-like flowers; and of course when the 
great pods burst and the fields are whitened with the 
snow of the harvest, it is worth one's while to take a 
run down into the cotton country. On the lower 



CESAR'S HEAD, CHIMNEY ROCK 89 

slopes of the Blue Ridge the cotton resembles the 
corn in its sparse growth. The red soil shows through 
even at maturity, and as summer advances the mel- 
low reds, yellows, and bronzes of the leaves and 
stems cover the cotton-fields with a rich brocade of 
colors. 

When we descend to the cotton country in quest 
of Caesar's Head, we cross into South Carolina and 
follow well-known and very red roads beneath the 
eastern front of Hogback and the line of low, rounded 
forms that lie beyond it, and that end in the abrupt 
and shining cliffs of Glassy Mountain. Now, the real 
cause for a pilgrimage to Caesar's Head is the view 
you get of the lowlands that lie spread, three thou- 
sand feet below you, a magical sea of light and color 
as far as the eye can reach. For whatever else the 
high mountains may offer, you must come to some 
favored crest of the Blue Ridge for these thrilling 
views of the Southern lowlands. 

From Glassy Rock, on the top of Glassy Moun- 
tain, there is an outlook rivaling that from Caesar's 
Head, and here some day you will go, up over a 
road so execrable that you will finally leave the car- 
riage and walk, or else you will perhaps ride horse- 
back the whole distance. Upon ascending Glassy, 
one's first full view of the lowlands is from a sharp 
turn in the road, whence on a clear day you see them 
quivering below you, reaching away and away until 
they enter the sky at the far horizon. Then glimpses 
of them come and go, caught through a green veil 
of pine trees that wonderfully intensifies the blues 



90 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

of the nearer spaces. It is the magical light, the 
transforming vast sunshine of the South drenching 
the plain and the air, mingling as it were the sky and 
the earth, that transfigures the scene. To say that 
the lowlands are blue gives but a hint of the truth. 
They are like an inverted sky meeting the real sky 
at the horizon. 

As you follow the steep way, you come again and 
again to some open place whence you can look off 
over the plains, and when the corn is ripe, and you 
look abroad through the golden screen it makes, the 
wide reach of the lowlands and the distant blue 
heights become so intense in color as almost to pain 
the senses. There are lonely cabins with flowers 
about them at long intervals all the way up Glassy, 
and if you come in the spring, you will see the blue 
sky above and the blue sea below through a veil of 
peach blossoms, which is wonderful. 

We cannot see Glassy from Traumfest, as it lies 
behind Hogback. It belongs to that indefinite and 
mysterious region known as the "Dark Corners," 
and the people tell us of wild deeds done here in by- 
gone days. ^ But there is no hint of anything ugly, as 
one ascends its rough road on a fair day, and looks 
out through those openings across the azure sea. 
The road leads to an unpainted church on the top 
of the mountain where on "preaching-day" the 
women assemble in their best black sunbonnets and 
the men in their Sunday clothes. From the lonely 
little "church-house" a path guides you to the top 
of Glassy Rock, whose steep front shines like glass 



CiESAR'S HEAD, CHIMNEY ROCK 91 

when wet — which is much of the time. The top of 
the rock is covered with those crisp and aromatic 
growths that belong to mountain-tops, and which 
are so pleasant to rest upon. Moreover, all sorts of 
dainty little wild flowers peep out from the crevices; 
and from it one gets an unobstructed view out over 
that ineffable sea of color, losing itself in ineffable 
sky spaces, of which one has caught glimpses while 
ascending the mountain. But from here there is a 
wider horizon and one sees the long and lovely 
line of mountains lying like islands in the dreamy sea, 
those charming ridges where the mountains come 
to an end. 

As we sit here one day, a mountaineer approaches, 
and, pointing to a man crossing a field on muleback 
far below, laconically remarks, "That gentleman's 
pa was killed at Glassy Mounting church." Then 
he tells how the people were waiting for the preacher 
to come one Sunday, when suddenly shots were 
heard, and two men of the congregation fell dead. 
The cause of this ghastly deed was the usual one, a 
quarrel between two moonshiners; and the method 
of revenge was characteristic, one of the men having 
warned the other that if he went to church next 
preaching-day, he would have him arrested. Of 
course he went. Worse things than this have hap- 
pened on Glassy Mountain, notwithstanding the 
enchanting light in which it is now immersed. 
Glassy, on its western side, has many a wild ravine 
for those who wish to hide. 

If bound for Caesar's Head, one passes the Glassy 



92 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

Mountain road without turning In, traverses culti- 
vated valleys and a long reach of wild forest, until 
finally the road climbs in long curves up the side of 
the Blue Ridge itself to where the settlement of 
Caesar's Head lies, nested in the sunshine. 

There is a change of climate at Caesar's Head, for 
it is four thousand feet high. One sees grass, and the 
air is cooler and more stimulating than at Traum- 
fest, but you have no Idea where you really are until 
you follow the path under the trees to the top of the 
terrible cliff, where, looking to the east, one sees 
radiant mountains rising rank above rank, while to 
the west the eye plunges into an abyss floored by the 
glowing sea of the lowlands. 

Perhaps the most impressive view of the lowlands 
is from a point below the top of the cliff, where, 
past the sharp edge of near and substantial rock, the 
eye leaps, as it were, out into space. On the edge 
of the cliff, nature has sculptured the rude outlines 
of a human face, from which we are told this com- 
manding spot got its name. The cliff itself, towering 
above those vast spaces, does honor to Caesar, what- 
ever may be said of the ape-like profile. 

From the cliff one also looks directly down Into 
the "Dismal" at its foot, beyond which rises the 
smooth and forbidding stone front of Table Rock. 
The Dismal is impressive enough at any time, and 
it may give you one of the grand spectacular mo- 
ments of your life if you are fortunate enough to 
stand over it after a storm at sunset, when down 
from the mountains roll rivers of mist, to enter the 



CESAR'S HEAD, CHIMNEY ROCK 93 

abyss of the Dismal and fill it with glory. Below, 
you will see surging, lifting and falling, soft thunder- 
heads of gold, of bronze, of copper, and purple. The 
Dismal seems a wizard's gulf, swallowing the hues 
of the heavens, which one imagines it will in time 
cast forth again to sweep over the sky. And walking 
back towards the hotel in the twilight one may look 
through an open space at Hogback and Glassy 
Mountains against a calm and radiant background, 
and above them the whole Saluda Range, beautifully 
outlined. 

Besides the views offered by the position of 
Caesar's Head, just below it passes one of the few 
roads that cross the barrier of the Blue Ridge to the 
upper mountains, this one leading to the renowned 
valley of the French Broad River. 

Early spring is a good time to visit either Caesar's 
Head or Chimney Rock, and perhaps you will turn 
towards Chimney Rock before nature has begun to 
cover her red soil with summer verdure. The road 
leads down and around the end of Tryon Mountain 
and between the hills that lie to the north of it. The 
grain in places is well started ; here and there you see 
a glowing hillside sparsely covered with pale-blue 
rye or bright-green wheat. The red soil is furrowed 
in concentric lines, curves and counter-curves ; rows 
of beans are visible, and young corn-blades are up. 
Nature, never weary, is gayly beginning her perennial 
task of feeding the world. In some of the fields cot- 
ton is lifting up its head, and about the houses fruit 
trees are in bloom. 



94 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

You keep the "main leading wagon-road" as di- 
rected, cross the once dreaded torrent of Green River, 
not now through the dangerous ford, but over a safe, 
new bridge. The Green River, — so green as you cross 
it on the train up in the mountains beyond Saluda, 
and so charming in the "cove" below Saluda, where 
water and banks are so very, very green, the trees 
reaching over and forbidding the sun to shine too 
brightly in the cool solitude, — the Green River 
down here is also green, though it has already begun 
to lose a little of its mountain freshness. 

The "main leading wagon-road" finally leads you 
down the pretty valley of Cane Creek to the wide 
Hickorynut Gap Road, on its way to Rutherfordton, 
a state road, if one is not mistaken. Entering it, 
you turn to the left and follow it up the Broad River 
Valley and close to the water that comes in jumps 
and tumbles, darting and whirling down from its 
sources in the high springs of the mountains. Large 
trees border the valley, beeches and oaks and tulip- 
trees, with straight dark pines for color balance. 
Looking up it, you see one of those happy arrange- 
ments of mountains that make a valley something 
more than mere solid earth and running water. It is 
these overlapping, down-reaching mountains that 
give this region its characteristic charm. For the 
Broad River Valley is noted for its beauty, although 
it has no high mountains, nor any remarkable 
grandeur of scenery. 

Crossing a charming, though somewhat deep and 
rocky ford of the Broad River, you continue on up 



CESAR'S HEAD, CHIMNEY ROCK 95 

the beautiful valley, the mountains draw in about 
you, and you are at "Logan's," a large, old-fashioned 
farmhouse which was converted to the uses of a way- 
side inn when the road went through to Ruther- 
fordton, connecting the mountains above here with 
the low country. Logan's is "in the scenery," so 
they tell you a good many times while there — and 
unquestionably it is. A beautiful cultivated valley 
lies about the house enchantingly surrounded by 
mountains. The mountains of this region, although 
so individual in form, so picturesque, or so beauti- 
ful, are, according to General Logan, worth about a 
cent apiece, there is so little soil on them. 

Close to us is the Old Rumbling Bald, high up on 
whose rocky top is what appears to be a cabin, but 
which is such only in seeming — from some trick of 
the shadows against the broken rock. This is pointed 
out to the visitor as "Esmeralda's cabin," so named 
because here at Logan's the author of "Esmeralda" 
wrote her play in the presence of the Old Rumbling 
Bald. The Old Rumbling Bald is, perhaps, the most 
noted of any mountain in this part of the world. Up 
to 1878, he was just the "Old Bald," but then he 
began to rumble and shake the earth, and thereby 
attained a distinction that set him apart from all the 
other mountains of the Blue Ridge. Whatever 
else the others were or did, none of them "rumbled." 
From '78 to '80 the Old Bald kept the people won- 
dering, and those near him apprehensive. What was 
he rumbling about? Why was he shaking the earth? 
And what would he do next? He rumbled his last 



96 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

rumble in '85, we were told, since when he has been 
as quiet as of old. 

To look at the rocky wall of the mountain and see 
the clean, new granite gives one an intimation of 
what has happened. Great slabs and cliffs have split 
off and settled down, no doubt "rumbling" as they 
went, and the crack that suddenly appeared on top 
has grown to a chasm ten feet wide, one hundred 
feet deep, and three or four hundred yards long. 
Curiosity prompts you to approach the Old Rum- 
bling Bald over a pleasant path where one passes a 
lonely cabin that might be a child of the old gray 
mountain, and out of which comes a lovely little 
girl with glorious blue eyes, her face framed in a wide- 
ruffled pink sunbonnet. In one hand she carries a 
pretty basket of green things, and in the other a 
great bunch of roses and snowballs. We climbed Old 
Bald's rocky front, stopping for a long draught of 
icy water from a spring that comes out of the rocks, 
and to admire the thrifty appearance of the peach 
trees in an orchard on the stony slope. We were 
told that these bore peaches of exceptionally fine 
quality, after which we were not at all surprised to 
learn that they were in the thermal belt! 

At last we get to a great crack in the mountain — 
not the chasm on top, but a crack lower down, that 
makes a series of caves, from the threshold of which 
one looks out between massive walls of granite far 
down the valley, over the tops of the near mountains, 
and across to the blue line of the horizon against 
which stands outlined the beautiful King's Moun- 



CESAR'S HEAD, CHIMNEY ROCK 97 

tain, "where we whipped Ferguson," our guide re- 
minds us. It is a commanding view down over the 
lowlands, for the Old Rumbling Bald is the last of 
the mountains in this direction, its mighty form 
standing like a sentinel above the lower country, 
at the gateway that passes between it and Chimney 
Rock Mountain, just across the valley. 

Then we go into the cool caverns reached by nar- 
row halls and partly by ladder, and whose walls are 
of freshly exposed granite, where great slabs and 
splinters look ready to fall at the slightest rumble. 
There is an opening to the sky at the far end, but 
inaccessible. But there is a "window" that lets in 
light, and out of which one can look past massive 
casements of solid rock, and across the valley to 
Chimney Rock Mountain and Sugarloaf, and be- 
tween other and lower mountains down into the hot, 
quivering blue plains of the lowlands. It is delight- 
fully cool in the caves, and as one looks around at 
the fresh granite walls, one has a sense of being 
present at the creation of the earth. 

If you follow up the Broad River Valley as far as 
the settlement of Bat Cave, you will find another 
mountain with similar cavernous openings, and 
some one will guide you to the largest of these, Bat 
Cave. But more beautiful than Bat Cave is the 
Broad River Valley on a smiling May day, with its 
gentle scenery, its fresh growths, and its lovely 
mountains, and in it, with a perfectly justified name, 
is the Mountain View Hotel, and — of course — 
Esmeralda Inn. 



98 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

All through the mountains "faults" in the rock 
occur, usually on a small scale, and landslides in 
some sections are frequent; while at Hot Springs 
the water comes forth ready-heated from some 
internal caldron, as though to keep us in mind that 
the earth we live on is yet in the making, even 
these ancient mountains continually changing their 
shapes. 

Being at Bat Cave, we can continue along the good 
road over the watershed that separates the Broad 
River from Hickorynut Creek, and down the Hick- 
orynut' Creek Valley, on, over the" plateau of the 
Blue Ridge, even as far as to Asheville. For the 
Broad River, which has its sources on the eastern 
slopes of the Blue Ridge, has no connection what- 
ever with the more famous French Broad, which 
runs in the opposite direction. 

But one must not leave Logan's yet, not before 
taking that delightful walk up the creek to the Pools, 
a series of large, round, fabulously deep pot-holes. 
There are three of them, and, according to the 
people, one of them has no bottom, while another is 
one hundred feet deep, and the third, eighty feet 
deep. Aside from their invisible depths, the pools 
are worth a visit because of the visible and charming 
manner in which Pool Creek comes sliding over 
smooth rock faces, finally to leap in a cascade into 
pool after pool, striking with force and whirling 
around the smooth stone wall of the basin. Pool 
Creek has many cascades; and it is shaded by tall 
trees, and bordered by the beautiful growths of the 



CiESAR'S HEAD. CHIMNEY ROCK 99 

region, and beset with wild flowers, in their season. 
So, even were its pools of commonplace depths, one 
would look back with pleasure to a walk up the en- 
chanting stream. 

The Chimney Rock region is quite noted for its 
waterfalls, most of the streams that come from that 
part of the mountains making their escape to the 
levels below by long leaps down the walls. And the 
Broad River Valley might be called the "Valley of 
Many Waters," with its long cascades and its rush- 
ing streams. 

Chimney Rock itself, an uphill walk of an hour or 
more from Logan's, and from which the place is 
named, is a great pillar of solid rock, separated from 
the main wall of the near mountain and rounded by 
the elements. To its right is by far a nobler stone 
battlement, but the distinction of Chimney Rock is 
in its total separation from the main mass of the 
mountain, which here rises in sheer, bare walls, a 
characteristic of the mountains of this region, 
many of which are wooded on top and at the base, 
with a broad girdle of bare cliffs between. For a long 
time Chimney Rock was inaccessible, but now any- 
body can get on the top of it, simply by climbing a 
stairway and crossing a timber bridge that has 
brazenly connected the lonely summit with the 
common world. 

On the rocky top three or four dwarfed and twisted 
pine trees have managed to grow. At the base 
of the rock and of the mountain, the small pink 
rhododendron was everywhere in bloom, and, as we 



100 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

ascended, a delicious fragrance became more and 
more perceptible, until we discovered, growing 
above us on the ledges of the main mountain, great 
airy masses of blossoming fringe-trees that hung 
over the edges of the cliffs and shone white in the 
deep woods behind. The sparkleberry bushes were 
also swinging their snowy bells, and the wild goose- 
berries were trying to rival them in prodigality of 
bloom. These gooseberries, common at a certain 
elevation, are very wild, indeed, becoming, as they 
develop, closely covered with long prickles, which, 
however, does not prevent one from eating them 
when ripe. 

The view from the top of Chimney Rock up the 
Broad River Valley might be described as that of 
grand scenery in miniature. It is the atmosphere 
that makes the mountains here so charming, for, 
seen near at hand, they are rather forbidding with 
their stern, bare rocks. They are frequently finished 
on one side into rounded turrets. One can imagine 
that there might be times when this part of the 
country would appear less seductive than it appears 
on a fair spring day. 

Because of the natural phenomena, so abundant 
about Chimney Rock, the rumbling mountain, the 
caves, the Isolated "chimney," it is not surprising 
that a number of strange legends have collected 
about it, in which ghostly visitants play their part, 
although as a rule the mountain people are not 
superstitious. They go fearlessly through the wilder- 
ness alone, even "lying out" with their herds, or 



CESAR'S HEAD, CHIMNEY ROCK loi 

for other reasons, with no apprehension of seeing 
anything more terrifying than a bear or a wild- 
cat, an encounter with either of which would be 
regarded by the mountain man as a most fortunate 
adventure. 



XI 

THE HIGH MOUNTAINS 

THE long, curving wall of the Blue Ridge, rising 
from the foothills like a rampart, guards the 
mountain region that lies beyond it so well that it 
is difficult to find an entrance through. But this 
charming wall, so abrupt on its eastern side, all but 
disappears when looked at from the west, for on 
that side it is often no higher than the plateau of 
which it forms the eastern boundary, although it 
rises here and there in notable peaks such as the 
Grandfather, the Pinnacle, Graybeard, and Stand- 
ing Indian Mountains. 

The plateau ! One ascends a thousand feet above 
Traumfest to find, not a flat tableland, but a new 
world of mountains, mountains that might have 
seated themselves aloft for the delectation of man- 
kind, so cool and fresh and yet so gracious do they 
appear to one coming up among them through some 
enchanted gate in the wall of the Blue Ridge. This 
plateau, which is about two hundred miles long, is 
bordered on the east by the long, irregular, un- 
broken, and winding wall of the Blue Ridge, and on 
thcwest by the parallel and more regular line of high 
and massive mountains known as the Unaka Range. 
The Unaka, unlike the Blue Ridge, is divided by 
deep gorges into several sections, one of these being 



THE HIGH MOUNTAINS 103 

the Great Smoky Mountains familiar to all through 
the stories of Charles Egbert Craddock, where they 
are so truly and charmingly portrayed. 

The plateau, narrower and higher in the north and 
gradually lowering as it runs southward, is crossed 
by a number of short high ranges. At its narrowest 
point just north of the Grandfather Mountain, it is 
only about fifteen miles across, and all this northern 
portion has a general elevation of about four thou- 
sand feet, that is to say, its larger valleys lie at that 
elevation surrounded by mountains. South of the 
Grandfather the plateau widens out to about sixty- 
five miles across and drops until its larger valleys 
lie at a general elevation of from two to three thou- 
sand feet. But while the valleys here are lower, the 
mountains are higher, there being in this region 
many of the highest and grandest mountains of the 
whole Appalachian uplift. 

Along the crest of the Unaka runs the boundary 
line between North Carolina and Tennessee. On 
this line or close to it, now on one side and now on 
the other, lie some of the highest mountains of the 
region, although the most remarkable uplift is per- 
haps the short Black Mountain Range, in North 
Carolina, well away from the Tennessee border, and 
where, although the range is only fifteen miles long, 
there are more than a dozen summits above six 
thousand feet in elevation, one of these. Mount 
Mitchell, 67 1 1 feet high, being the highest point 
east of the Rockies. 

It is not very long since the geographies taught 



104 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

us that Mount Washington in New Hampshire, with 
an elevation of 6293 feet, was the highest mountain 
in the East. But since then the surveyors have been 
at work in the Southern mountains, to find in the 
Great Smokies, the Blacks, and the Balsams over 
twenty peaks higher than Mount Washington. A 
North Carolina government report, after giving a 
list of altitudes of the principal mountains, concludes 
thus: " In all, forty-three peaks of six thousand feet 
and upwards. And there are eighty-two mountains 
which exceed in height five thousand feet, and closely 
approximate six thousand, and the number which 
exceed four thousand, and approximate five thou- 
sand are innumerable." 

The principal mountains between the two border- 
ing chains are placed in a somewhat orderly manner 
in short ranges that for the most part lie nearly 
parallel one to another, crossing the plateau in a gen- 
erally northwesterly direction. The most northerly 
of these, however, the beautiful dome-shaped Black 
Mountains lying to the north of Asheville, is not 
parallel with the others, but runs almost north from 
the point where it leaves the Blue Ridge. 

Southwest from the Blacks and to the south of 
Asheville rises the range of the Newfound Moun- 
tains, and south of that the charming Pisgah Range 
that takes a northeasterly direction. Next in order, 
and nearly parallel to the Newfound Mountains, is 
the high Balsam Range containing some fifteen 
summits exceeding six thousand feet. Then comes 
the wild Cowee Range, then the bold and beautiful 



THE HIGH MOUNTAINS 105 

line of the Nantahala, beyond which the mountain 
country sinks to lower levels in Georgia. 

A knowledge of this regularity in the position of 
the more important mountains is helpful to the 
explorer, though it is by no means apparent to the 
casual observer, who, coming up among them, sees 
mountains on all sides, some rising close at hand in 
ridges, summits, and walls of foliage, and between 
these and over their heads others that show forth 
delicate, spirit-like forms against the sky. 

Although the mountains are so generally covered 
with hardwood and pine forests, the upper parts of 
the higher ones are clad in a dark, unbroken mantle 
of spruce and balsam fir, and many have "bald" 
summits that, covered with grass, make natural pas- 
tures, sometimes many hundred of acres in extent. 

One ascending to the plateau finds, as it were, the 
beautiful world on the slopes of the Blue Ridge lifted 
skyward with its fragrance, its flooding sunlight, 
and its marvelous colors unimpaired. The dreamy 
Unaka Range, with its superb group of the Great 
Smokies, takes the place of the Blue Ridge in the 
landscape, but it is more broken in contour, rising in 
massive domes and lovely rounded peaks. It is like 
the fabric of a dream as one sees it in the distance. 
Through the gorges that cleave its stupendous walls 
and add grandeur to the scenery, rush the rivers of 
the plateau to enter the Mississippi by way of the 
Tennessee and Ohio, — only one river breaking 
through the wall of the Blue Ridge to find its way 
eastward to the Atlantic, for the plateau slants to 



io6 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the west throwing the waters towards the higher 
Unaka Mountains. Thus the Blue Ridge, in spite of 
its lower elevation, is the watershed of the mountain 
region. 

This portion of the Appalachian system where 
the high mountains lie, although a part of the long 
uplift reaching from Canada to Alabama, and in 
which is no geological break, is nevertheless disso- 
ciated from the northern part by its higher elevation 
and lower altitude, these differences isolating it and 
betsowing upon it its rich dower of beauty. For al- 
though there are higher precipices and deeper ra- 
vines here than in the North, these mountains never 
convey the same impression of sternness, — the 
everywhere present vegetation that rounds the out- 
lines and the soft atmosphere combining to give the 
landscape a gentle expression. Perhaps the difference 
between the Northern and the Southern mountains 
can be expressed by saying that those are grand and 
these are lovely. In the magical atmosphere of the 
South you see the Great Smokies like wraiths against 
the western sky, the Nantahalas in the distance 
swimming in a sea of glory, the stern Balsams, the 
fir-crowned Blacks, all immersed in a light that 
transforms them. 

Between the mountains lie enchanting valleys, 
and everywhere bright streams are running. The 
brooks or "branches" racing down the slopes, the 
rivers rushing along, the numberless waterfalls and 
the ice-cold springs everywhere gushing out of the 
earth, give freshness and life to the mountains. But 



THE HIGH MOUNTAINS 107 

while the running waters are so abundant, one soon 
notices the complete absence of natural lakes. Here 
are none of those beautiful basins that so enhance 
the charm of our Northern mountain regions. 

The reason for this difference lies far back in the 
millenniums when the great ice cap that lay over the 
northern part of the earth, quite covering Mount 
Washington and all that region where the New Eng- 
land and Canadian lakes now lie, stopped short of 
the Southern mountains. Since the glaciers that 
scooped out or dammed up the lake beds of the 
North never reached these delectable heights, it 
happened that while the Northern mountains were 
being scraped bare to the bone by relentless ice, the 
Southern mountains were accumulating that soil 
out of which has been woven the wonderful mantle 
of trees that clothes them from top to bottom. 

Also, because the glaciers did not reach them, these 
mountains were able to weather slowly through the 
ages, which has produced their beautiful, rounded 
contours, although there are some very rugged cliffs 
among them. For the same reason the best soil is 
often found near the top of the mountains, which 
accounts for the curious appearance of cornfields 
hung up like wind-blown banners on the steepest 
slopes. 

It is largely due to the ancient glaciers that the 
Northern mountains are yet so bare and stony 
towards the top. And because the Northern moun- 
tains are so cold and barren, the people live down 
below and look up to them. Here the people live 



io8 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

among the mountains themselves. They love them, 
and are afraid to go down to the country that lies 
level below, because, they say, if you go out of the 
mountains you die. And truth to tell very likely 
you do. 

One of the pleasures of being in the North Carolina 
mountains is the presence of the simple and kindly 
people scattered everywhere over them, this great 
wilderness containing some two hundred thousand 
inhabitants, among whom may be found men and 
women who even yet have never ridden on a railway 
train, seen an automobile, or heard of an aeroplane. 
Shut up within the barriers of the mountains and 
isolated from contact with the rest of the world, the 
mountain whites, like people cast upon an island in 
mid-ocean, have developed customs and a dialect of 
their own. With their quaint speech and their primi- 
tive life they form perhaps the last link left in this 
country between the complex present and that sim- 
ple past when man satisfied his wants from the bosom 
of the earth, and was content to do so. All over the 
mountains is a network of paths and each path leads 
to the door of a friend. One need not fear to walk 
alone from village to village, from "settlement" to 
"settlement," to wander at will in this vast sweet 
forest, where every man, woman, and child is glad 
to see you and ready to help you get what you 
want. 

Thoroughly to enjoy the mountains, however, 
you must walk, or ride horseback. There are roads 
everywhere, but too often to drive over them as- 



THE HIGH MOUNTAINS 109 

sumes the nature of an adventure. The one draw- 
back to walking is the crossing of the waters, for the 
mountains are so closely veined with streams that 
you cannot go a mile without having to cross at least 
one, generally on a "footway" the sight of which fills 
the novice with dismay. They are often very pictur- 
esque, these foot-logs, but one is apt to lose sight of 
that in the imminence of having to walk over one. 
Some of the bridges are good, sound tree- trunks lev- 
eled on the upper side and supplied with a hand-rail, 
but this is luxury. His wildest currents the moun- 
taineer prefers to span with the smallest pole that 
can bear his weight, and his wide rivers he crosses on 
a "bench." 

You will be likely to remember your first bench. 
Imagine long-legged saw-horses driven into the bed 
of the river the length of a long plank apart — two 
saw-horses placed tandem at each junction. Now 
imagine a plank reaching from the river-bank to the 
first saw-horse, and supported by it some four feet 
above the water. A short gap is succeeded by another 
plank extending between the second and third saw- 
horse and so on until the river is crossed. Such is 
the bench. A good recipe for crossing your first 
bench is to imagine that somebody is looking as you 
step up on It. This helps you to assume an easy 
attitude, as though you were there for the scenery. 
Then edge along a step, sideways, and again stop and 
thoughtfully regard the beauties of nature; thus, edg- 
ing along and stopping every step or two for a long 
and reassuring look at the distant tree-tops, you will 



no THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

get to the first saw-horse. At this point it will be 
well to use your own judgment. 

But one loving a walk need not refrain because of 
the bridges. You soon become used to them, and a 
long stick is so great a help as to rob any ordinary 
foot-log of more than half its terrors. The foot-log, 
indeed, soon becomes one of the pleasures in a 
mountain-walk, for it seems naturally to choose the 
most picturesque place on the stream, generally 
beginning and ending at the foot of a large tree. To 
stand mid-stream on a broad, squared log thrown 
across from bank to bank and guarded by a rail on 
one side, to stand there and watch the lights glint- 
ing through the forest foliage on the swift, rippling 
water, to look into the deep shadows under the 
clustering laurel and rhododendron bushes and the 
arching tree branches both up and down the stream, 
— to do this is to get from the mountain bridge 
enough to balance other moments when perchance 
a three-cornered fence-rail thrown across the top of 
a waterfall offers the only avenue of approach to the 
other bank of the stream. 



XII 

FLAT ROCK COMMUNITY, AN IDEAL OF THE PAST 

THE easiest though least romantic way for us of 
Traumfest to scale the rampart of the Blue 
Ridge, and storm the magical heights beyond, is to 
take the train that goes to Asheville. Out of the 
gorge of the Pacolet, that in the season of flowers and 
in the right light is a fitting gateway to the imagined 
world above, the train climbs with the help of two 
engines, and reaches Saluda, cool and breezy, — a 
favorite summer resort for the Southerners of the 
low country, although it has none of those large es- 
tates and signs of a courtly past that so charmingly 
distinguish Flat Rock that lies farther along the way. 
The village of Saluda lies at the end of the Saluda 
Mountains, on whose slopes are born the headwaters 
of the Saluda River that follows down a little valley 
back of Hogback and Rocky Spur, and whose name, 
Saluda, or Salutah, means "river of corn," the valley 
of the Saluda for many miles being, indeed, that 
most charming of nature's fancies — a river of corn. 
Just beyond Saluda the train crosses the becom- 
ingly named Green River, and then on, around, and 
about it goes till the Blue Ridge is fairly surmounted 
and we are on top of it, as well as on the widest stretch 
of plateau in the whole mountain region. One gets 
glimpses of blue heights through the pine trees, and 



112 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the air one breathes is not the air of Traumfest, for 
we have ascended a thousand feet, and to the soft- 
ness of the Southern air is added a fine, keen quality 
that wakes one up. In time the train reaches Flat 
Rock, one of the oldest and most interesting places 
in the mountains, although one can see nothing of it 
from the railway station. 

Long before a train had surmounted the barrier 
wall of the Blue Ridge, the beauty, and salubrity of 
the high mountains had called up from the eastern 
lowlands people of wealth and refinement to make 
here and there their summer homes. The first and 
most important of these patrician settlements was 
at Flat Rock, the people coming from Charleston, 
the centre of civilization in the Far South, and 
choosing Flat Rock because of its accessibility, and 
because the level nature of the country off ered oppor- 
tunity for the development of beautiful estates and 
the making of pleasure roads through the primeval 
forest that in those days had not been disturbed. 
Into the great, sweet wilderness, now quite safe from 
Indians, these children of fortune brought their ser- 
vants and their laborers, and selecting the finest 
sites, whence were extensive views of the not too 
distant mountains, surrounded by the charming 
growths of the region, in a land emblazoned and 
carpeted with flowers, built their homes of refuge 
from the burning heat and the equally burning mos- 
quitoes of the coast land. 

The train comes from the seacoast to-day, but 
half a century ago it was much more of an under- 



FLAT ROCK COMMUNITY 113 

taking to go to Flat Rock from Charleston than it 
now is to go to Europe, and much more romantic, 
for Flat Rock, more than two weeks' journey dis- 
tant, had to be reached by way of the country roads 
over which the people drove in their own carriages, 
accompanied by a retinue of servants and provision 
w^agons. 

At the west side of Hogback, there comes up from 
the lowlands a road that, crossing a gap in the moun- 
tains, makes its way over and about and between 
them, passing Flat Rock on its way to Asheville. 
This is the old Buncombe Pike, or rather what is 
left of it, for since the war it has been allowed to fall 
into disrepair, only parts of it here and there hinting 
at any period of prosperity. From the opening of its 
first tollgate, in 1827, this road became the great 
artery of passage between the rich Southern lands 
and the new and prodigiously fertile West. Over it 
passed droves of horses, cattle, sheep, and hogs, as 
well as whatever produce the mountains and the 
lands beyond them might have to exchange for the 
products of the more civilized East, products that in 
their turn came up and over the mountains to the 
people of the West. To the romance of this old road 
was added a charming touch when, with the spring 
flowers, there came every year that migration from 
Charleston, like a flock of birds winging their way 
over the blue mountains in search of their summer 
homes. 

One can imagine these processions of young and 
old starting out for the two weeks' picnic along the 



114 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

road, a picnic to the young people at least, who one 
can well believe looked forward to it undaunted by 
any thought of the possible storms that might put 
the rivers in flood, and convert the roads, even the 
best of them, in places, into bottomless sloughs of 
red and liquid mud, a procession that makes one 
think of the stories of far-away times, when queens 
and princesses traveled from one city to another over 
roads as bad as these. This procession up the moun- 
tains had fewer trappings on the horses and less gayly 
attired escort than did those of the olden time ; but 
we may be sure that the carriages of the gentlefolk 
of the nineteenth century were pleasanter convey- 
ances than the mule litters of the Middle Ages, and 
we may also be sure that no lovelier faces looked out 
from the gorgeous retinue on its way across the hills 
of the past than could be seen in the carriages where 
sat the ladies of the New World, with their patrician 
beauty and their gracious manners. And although 
the escort of the New World travelers did not num- 
ber a thousand gayly dressed cavaliers, it consisted 
of a retinue of those ebony children of the sun, who 
loved the pleasant journey, and loved their gentle 
lords and ladies, — for all this happened in those 
halcyon days "before the war" when the angel of 
wrath had not yet righted the wrong of holding even 
a black man in subjection to the will of another, 
and when the real "quality" cherished their slaves 
and were greatly loved by them. 

It must have been like coming to Arcadia, up from 
the heated plains, in those days before the forests 



FLAT ROCK COMMUNITY 115 

had been hurt by man, when every stream was full of 
fish, and the surrounding forests were full of game. 
Flat Rock, at first consisting of only a few families, 
soon grew into a good-sized community of delightful 
homes, and there is still an air of elegance and seclu- 
sion about its old estates, with their mansions of a 
by-gone day set back behind the trees, and there are 
yet living a few who remember with tenderness and 
regret the old days when life at Flat Rock was a 
joyous round of visits and merrymakings, among 
which costume balls for the young people, and 
dinner-parties for their elders, are recalled with 
retrospective pleasure, while the boulevard of the 
time, the Little River Road, was thronged with car- 
riages and riders, all enjoying themselves in the 
wonderful air — exchanging greetings and making 
a gay scene in the midst of the wild nature that 
surrounded them. 

One of the most charming of these old places, 
"The Lodge," with its broad views, its avenues of 
big trees, its formal garden, its old-fashioned kitchen 
and commodious outbuildings, was owned and laid 
out by one of the English Barings, of banking fame, 
and here, following a certain path that leads through 
the grounds towards the road, one comes to a gate 
that appears to be closed by short bars, but when 
you touch one of these bars, down it falls and all the 
rest with it, allowing you to pass, when it closes 
again. It is a " tumble-down stile" like the one near 
Stratford-on-Avon, which your driver assures you is 
the very one where Will Shakespeare, poacher, was 



ii6 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

caught trying to get through with a deer on his 
shoulders. 

One cannot help noticing, when wandering about 
the winding roads of Flat Rock, the white pines and 
hemlocks there, and that the soil is gray. White 
pines and hemlocks are the right trees for such a 
place, where one looks over broad meadows and into 
apple orchards, and where trees and shrubbery are 
grouped to please the eye, the native rhododendrons 
giving a fine patrician touch to the effect of the 
whole. The box hedges and the shrubberies, the high 
fences along the roadside at Flat Rock, speak of 
another civilization than that of the mountains, as 
does the picturesque church of St. John-in-the- 
Wilderness behind its screening trees, and it is very 
pleasant to pause a little in this corner of the great 
wilderness, set apart and beautified by the "quality " 
of a past generation. 

It was the builder of the Lodge, Mr. Charles Bar- 
ing, with three or four others, who founded the com- 
munity of Flat Rock, to which were quickly added 
the homes of many of the most distinguished men 
in the history of their state. Among the names of 
these pioneers in the forest of Arcadia, we find Rut- 
ledge, Lowndes, Elliott, Pinckney, Middleton, and 
many others. Coming somewhat later, as friends of 
Mr. Baring, were Mr. Molyneux, British Consul at 
Savannah, and Count de Choiseuil, French Consul 
at the same place, the beautiful homes of these dis- 
tinguished foreigners still gi'acing Flat Rock. 

Perhaps the most cherished name in this moun- 



FLAT ROCK COMMUNITY 117 

tain settlement was that of the Rev. John G. Dray- 
ton, for many years rector of St. John-In-the-Wil- 
derness, and to whom the dignified and noble estate 
of Ravenswood at Flat Rock owes its origin, as well 
as those wonderful magnolia gardens on the Ashley 
River near Charleston, gardens where one wanders 
away into a dreamland of flowers unlike any other 
dreamland in the world. 

Then there was the Secretary of the Treasury of 
the Confederate States, Mr. G. C, Memminger, 
loved for his generosity and public spirit, who also 
had a home in the fortunate land of flowers and 
fresh air. 

And always, when talking to any of the old resi- 
dents of Flat Rock, comes forth the name of Dr. 
Mitchell C. King, who, for more than half a century, 
was the greatly loved physician of the community, 
and who, while a student at the University of Got- 
tingen, formed so warm a friendship with a fellow 
student, known as Otto von Bismarck, that, for 
many years after, a regular correspondence was 
carried on between the greatest statesman Germany 
has ever known and the genial and kindly physi- 
cian of the little mountain settlement, these letters 
being carefully preserved by the descendants of the 
doctor. 

The estates at Flat Rock have changed hands with 
the passing of time, yet many of them retain their 
original form, and new estates have been added by 
the "quality" of to-day; also new roads, beautifully 
planned, and beautifully bordered with the choicest 



ii8 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

growths of the mountains, have been built, giving 
promise of a renaissance that shall surpass in beauty 
the accomplishment of the older civilization of Flat 
Rock, and give direction, let us hope, to the future 
development of all that beautiful region. 



XIII 

ASHEVILLE 

A SHORT distance beyond Flat Rock, the train 
stops at Hendersonville, a gay garden of build- 
ings as seen in the distance, and where upon arriving 
one is dismayed to hear the pouf! pouff of an automo- 
bile. For Hendersonville has recently grown into a 
place of importance where summer visitors congre- 
gate, and it would also like you to know it is a rail- 
way centre. At least, besides the main line running 
through it, there is that branch line crossing over 
into the French Broad Valley and proceeding up 
past Brevard and on over the mountains into the 
Sapphire Country, that enchanting region where, 
besides silver cascades and blue mountains, one finds 
sumptuous hotels, artificial lakes, and the ways of 
the world. 

Beyond Hendersonville the train continues across 
the plateau some sixteen miles to Asheville, villages, 
from each of which one gets beautiful views, growing 
closer together. These villages in the forest, not visi- 
ble from the train, make pleasant summer resorts 
for the increasing numbers of those who come up to 
escape the heat of the plains. Each of them, of 
course, is destined to a great future, and the young- 
est and smallest, the one that bears the name of 
Tuxedo, must perforce bear more than this, for the 



120 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

trainmen in calling out the station prick the bubble 
of ambition by putting the accent on the last sylla- 
ble, when they do not put it on the first. 

Two miles before reaching Asheville, the train stops 
at a place which might cause the bewildered trav- 
eler, if unprepared, to wonder where he is. A corner 
out of some village of old England seems to have 
been set down bodily in the heart of the New World 
wilderness. It is the village of Biltmore, lying in full 
view from the train on a perfectly level space, a 
charming collection of houses surrounded by smooth 
lawns, wreathed in vines, shaded by trees, and 
grouped about a square and along winding streets. 
A church. Early Gothic in style, with a strong square 
central tower, is the natural and dignified centre of 
the village. The beauty of the interior of the church 
is enhanced by a number of fine stained-glass win- 
dows, one of which was placed there to the memory 
of Frederick Law Olmsted, America's greatest land- 
scape gardener, who laid out the grounds of Bilt- 
more, and another as a memorial to Richard M. 
Hunt, who designed the church as well as Biltmore 
House, the residence of Mr. Vanderbilt, which, 
standing three miles away, is not visible from the 
train. 

Coming suddenly upon Biltmore out of the sur- 
rounding forest, one has a prophetic sense of the 
change that is about to overwhelm these so long 
changeless mountains, and at Biltmore one must 
stop and become acquainted with the very interest- 
ing development that has there taken place. First, 



ASHEVILLE 121 

however, Ashevllle, the oldest, largest, and best- 
known town in the mountains, must be considered, 
since some knowledge of its history is necessary in 
order to understand the history of the mountains, 
including Biltmore. 

Leaving Biltmore the train soon reaches the city, 
for Asheville really is a city, with a population fall- 
ing a little short of twenty thousand. It lies in the 
valley of the French Broad River, which is far too 
narrow to hold it, so that the town has spread out 
over the surrounding hills, many of its houses, like 
those of Traumfest, standing with their lower regions 
on the slope beneath, and their front door decorously 
opening at street level. The history of Asheville, 
though not hoary with age, is yet interesting. Clearly 
to comprehend it one must retire to the year 1663, 
at which time Charles the Second of England gave 
"Carolina" so munificently to the lords proprietary, 
the territory thus summarily disposed of reaching 
from Virginia to Florida, and from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific. This tract was subsequently divided 
into several large states, one of them being North 
Carolina, or the "Old North State," as the people 
fondly called it. 

The Old North State, a territory larger than New 
York, the Empire State of the North, became the 
goal of so varied an emigration that in 1754 ^ public 
document declares its population to be composed of 
almost all the nations of Europe, and so fast did it 
grow that, at the time of the Revolution, North 
Carolina ranked fourth in population among the 



122 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

thirteen colonies. As the people increased in num- 
bers, the bolder and more independent spirits 
among them pressed farther into the wilderness, 
finally reaching the mountains where their energies 
found vent in fishing, trapping, and fighting the 
Indians. The people of the Old North State from 
the mountains to the sea have always been noted 
for their fearlessness and independence, these quali- 
ties in no degree decreasing as the pioneer element 
of the early settlers pressed towards the dangerous 
mountain wilderness. 

Beyond the Blue Ridge, in the very centre of the 
vast unbroken forest that covered the high unknown 
mountains. Buncombe County was erected in 1791, 
so large in area that its people proudly called it the 
"State of Buncombe," but which in course of time 
shrank to its present dimensions of about four hun- 
dred square miles, keeping, however, its most pre- 
cious gem, Asheville, as well as the noblest of its 
scenery, its ancient pride, and its name, which latter 
has made it the best-known and most exploited 
county in the mountains, in the state, and indeed 
in the country at large, a county name seldom reach- 
ing the fame of Buncombe. 

Asheville, if not actually old, is at least old rela- 
tively, for here stood the first settlement of white 
people in the mountains west of the Blue Ridge. 
This settlement was started soon after the Revolu- 
tionary War, as prior to that time the Indians 
had not learned to respect their neighbors' scalps 
sufficiently to make life among them agreeable, 



ASHEVILLE 123 

and only trappers and hunters ventured into this 
hazardous region, then swarming with game. 

The little group of log houses, at first called Mor- 
ristown, later, by the desire of the people, was 
named Asheville, in honor of Samuel Ashe, the well- 
loved governor of the state, and one of a family of 
gentlemen and heroes who loyally defended their 
adopted country against British rule, there being 
no less than five officers serving at one time from this 
family during the Revolutionary War. The origin 
of the name of the town explains the indignation 
felt by the people when careless strangers spell the 
first syllable without the letter e. 

The stories of the early settlement of the South 
are as thrilling as stories of settlement in any part 
of the New World; there was the same reckless 
bravery, the same opposition to oppression, the same 
spirit of adventure, the same encounters with Indi- 
ans, the same defiance of hardship and overcoming 
of difficulties, that afforded such stirring material 
to early writers in the North. 

The little hamlet up in the mountain wilderness 
that thus honored the name of Ashe consisted at 
first of less than a dozen log cabins, but those cabins 
had been put there by the kind of men who see a city 
when they look at a forest, and who regard an obsta- 
cle, including hostile Indians, as a happy chance to 
do something. Since they were made of the stuff 
that takes an axe and goes confidently into the woods 
to hew out a nation, they were also prophets, as wit- 
ness the case of Zebulon Baird, a zealous promoter of 



124 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the Interests of the community, who, pleading most 
eloquently in the general assembly for an appropria- 
tion for a wagon-road over the mountains, uttered 
the wild prophecy that his children would live to see 
the day when a stage-coach with four horses would 
be seen in the west, and the driver's horn would 
wake the echoes of the mountains! The road was 
granted, and came up from the eastern foothills of 
North Carolina some miles north of the railroad that 
now runs from Saluda through the Pacolet Valley to 
Asheville. It crossed the Swannanoa Gap at the 
present "long tunnel" on the Southern Railroad, a 
few miles above Old Fort, where as early as 1770 a 
small fort had been built to keep back the Indians 
who frequently poured down from the gap upon the 
settlers below the mountains, and which to-day is a 
small village with a railroad station. This road fol- 
lowed down the Swannanoa Valley to the present 
site of Biltmore, crossed where Asheville now stands, 
and continued down the beautiful French Broad as 
far as Hot Springs, connecting the mountains with 
the western wilderness of Tennessee as well as with 
the better-settled eastern foothills. The first wagon 
passed from North Carolina to Tennessee in 1795, 
and the making of this, the first road in the moun- 
tains, is recorded as marking an epoch in the develop- 
ment of the country, and if the prophecy of Zebulon 
Baird was not fulfilled to the letter, as it probably 
was, one has only to look at the railway trains now 
passing many times daily over the route, broadly 
speaking, of that first wagon-road, to know that 



ASHEVILLE 125 

the prophecy was fulfilled in spirit. Zebulon Baird, 
besides being a prophet and a legislator, was an 
enterprising business man, he and another man 
being the first merchants of Buncombe County. 
To be a merchant in Buncombe in those days, when 
produce had to be obtained, guarded, and carried 
on muleback, or over the new wagon-road, — which, 
judging from the conduct of wagon-roads in the 
mountains to-day, must often have been a feat in 
itself, — called for the same kind of courage and 
skill necessary to a general in an army. And that 
Zebulon Baird did not neglect the aesthetic needs of 
the human heart is proved by the fact that it was he 
who introduced the jew's-harp into the mountains, 
that dulcet instrument which has remained to this 
day enshrined in the hearts of the people. The life of 
the pioneer develops those quaint, humorous, or 
sterling characters that make easy the path of the 
novelist; and the imagination lingers with pleasure 
over the picture of George Swain, postmaster, who 
for twenty years, it is said, was never absent on 
arrival of the mail, and who distributed every letter 
with his own hands ! The Asheville Post-office, that 
in 1806 became the distributing centre for Tennessee, 
Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, prob- 
ably did not receive letters enough to overtax the 
powers of a strong man, and one can see the zealous 
postmaster eagerly awaiting the arrival of the mail 
that was to be consigned by him, and him alone, to 
the inhabitants of the, to him, known world. 

The sterling qualities of the postmaster were in- 



126 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

herited by his gifted son, David Lowrey Swain, one 
of the most honored names not only of the moun- 
tains but of the State of North Carolina. He was 
born in a log cabin at Beaver Dam, near Asheville, 
at the foot of Elk Mountain, in 1801, and was edu- 
cated at "Newton Academy," along with all the 
ambitious boys of that day, who came from far and 
near to profit by the instruction of the Rev. George 
Newton, who, as early as 1797, started a classical 
school at a place a mile south of Asheville. From the 
log school-house in the mountains David went to 
the University of North Carolina that had recently 
been established at Chapel Hill, near Raleigh, then 
to Raleigh, where at the age of twenty-two he was 
admitted to the bar. From that time all the honors 
within the gift of the people were heaped upon him. 
Before he was thirty he had been elected five times 
to the legislature as well as entrusted with other 
important public functions, including his election as 
judge of the supreme court, which office he resigned 
after two years, upon being elected, when only 
thirty-one years old, governor of the state. While 
governor he was elected a member of the conven- 
tion to revise the constitution, and in the same year 
was proffered the presidency of the University of 
North Carolina, which important position he oc- 
cupied for more than twenty-five years. Swain 
County, taken from Buncombe, was named after 
him, and his name is still cherished in the hearts of 
his loyal countrymen. 

The founders of Asheville chose the strategic posi- 



ASHEVILLE 127 

tlon of the mountains for their settlement, which 
lay on the natural line of travel between the fertile 
plains of the new West and the lowlands of the 
South, and which took an important step towards 
fame and fortune when, in 1880, a turnpike road, 
the famous Buncombe Pike, was chartered to pass 
from Paint Rock on the Tennessee line across the 
mountains to Greenville, South Carolina, by way of 
Saluda Gap, Paint Rock lying on the French Broad 
River a few miles below Hot Springs, the terminus 
of that first road whose course has already been 
indicated. It is one thing to charter a road in the 
mountain wilderness, another to build it, and not 
until more than a quarter of a century later was this 
great thoroughfare between the South and the West 
opened. 

Meantime, Asheville had not been standing still, 
as is shown by the fact that in 18 14 there was built 
within her borders — a frame house. A great event 
this, you can imagine, in a country where the saw- 
mill had not begun its triumphant career. This first 
frame house was built by James Patton, whose 
name is on the honor list of the settlers of this part 
of the country, and after whom the principal street 
of Asheville, Patton Avenue, was named. He had 
come up into the mountains from the lowlands in 
1792, at the age of thirty-six, and taken a large tract 
of land on the Swannanoa River. By birth an 
Irishman and by trade a weaver, he came to the New 
World, like so many others, to make a place for him- 
self, and by the untrammeled use of his natural 



128 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

gifts he succeeded. A man of sterling worth and 
honorable methods he developed the resources 
within his reach, finally becoming one of the fore- 
most merchants in the little community where the 
merchant was the man of importance. We are told 
that "traffic over the new road was immense, vast 
droves of horses, mules, cattle, and hogs being driven 
from the rich pasture lands of Tennessee and Ken- 
tucky to South Carolina and Georgia," in conse- 
quence of which "a large trade grew up at Asheville." 
At that time the present site of the city was owned 
entirely by James Patton and James M. Smith, the 
latter distinguished as being the first white child 
born in North Carolina west of the Blue Ridge. 
Only the site was there, however, not the city, for 
though we are assured that between 1805 and 1844 
Asheville had nearly doubled in size, we know that 
even so it contained less than a score of buildings, 
notable among which was a frame store building in 
South Main Street, owned by Mr. Montreville 
Patton. 

The older frame house, built by the elder Patton, 
was not to be eclipsed, however, for it became en- 
larged into the once famous " Eagle Hotel," with the 
distinction of being the first three-story building 
erected in that county so dear to the early settlers, 
and whose name was to give a new w^ord to the dic- 
tionary, and a new phrase to the political and lit- 
erary worlds. For although the county was named 
after Colonel Edward Buncombe, a brave officer in 
the American army, its notoriety is due to one of its 



ASHEVILLE 129 

own unique children, by name Felix Walker, wholse 
fluency of speech had earned for him the popular 
title of " the old oil jug." Being patriotic as well as 
fluent, Mr. Walker sang praises of Buncombe County 
in season and out of season, and, having been sent 
as first Member of Congress from that district, he 
arose to address the House. Here was his chance, 
and although he had nothing of importance to say, 
he ambled on until many members left the hall, when 
he kindly told the survivors that they might go too if 
they liked, as he would speak for some time longer, 
apologetically explaining that "he was only talking 
for Buncombe." 

The new road not only gave a great impetus to the 
commercial development of Asheville, but brought 
to the mountains the wealthy aristocrats of the low- 
lands, who came each summer to enjoy the climate 
and scenery of the mountains on the estates they 
acquired and beautified in that lovely land, the 
greatest number and the finest of these estates 
lying, as we know, at Flat Rock. But while the city 
visitors came in pomp up the mountains in the en- 
chanting spring and went back in the glorious 
autumn, the merchants of Asheville and the other 
mountain settlements went down in the late fall on 
horseback, their wives and daughters accompanying 
them in carriages, a train of loaded wagons bearing 
the produce of the mountains to be exchanged for 
the luxuries of the city. While the men attended to 
business, the other members of the family enjoyed a 
few weeks in the delights of city life, when all went 



130 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

back home again. These visits to the great world 
were confined, of course, to those who had been able 
to profit by the advantages of the situation in the 
mountains, where Hfe was yet primitive and most 
men poor. 

But Ashevllle was moving on, and in 1835, we are 
told. Dr. Samuel Dickson established there the first 
young ladles' seminary, so admirable an Institution 
that there came to It not only the girls of the region, 
but also many from the low country. This school 
was held In the first brick building In Ashevllle, 
described as a handsome colonial residence on South 
Main Street. 

Both the Newton Academy and the Young Ladles' 
Seminary were established and taught by Presby- 
terian ministers, and the first church was Presby- 
terian, a large and comfortable brick building, we 
are told, having been built on a beautiful site pre- 
sented by James Patton and Samuel Chunn, where 
the Presbyterian church now stands. The Metho- 
dists began In a wooden school-house on the site 
of the present Methodist Episcopal Church. The 
Episcopalians made a small beginning, but in 1849 
were able to build their church on land given them 
by James W. Patton, where the present church now 
stands. 

The Baptists had the hardest time of all at first, 
but the unflagging efforts of the Rev. Thomas 
Stradley, an Englishman who for many years was 
almost the sole representative of the Baptists in this 
region, were finally crowned with success, and he got 



ASHEVILLE 131 

both congregation and church. But if the Baptists 
had difficulty in getting started, their turn came 
later, for their doctrine so appealed to the people 
outside the town, or their zeal was so great, that in 
a few years practically the whole rural population 
was Baptist, or '* babdist" as the country people 
always say. 

From 1840 to i860 was the golden period, as we are 
told, of Buncombe's history, when comfort reigned 
and hospitality was the rule. Big state-coaches ran 
daily from Asheville to the three nearest railroad 
points, sixty miles away, for the railroads of those 
days stopped when they encountered the bulwarks 
of the mountains. Then came the Civil War, when 
the old order passed away and the whole South was 
prostrated for a time. Deserters from both sides 
took refuge in the mountains. Desperadoes of the 
worst sort lived in caves and raided the country. 
Nevertheless, by 1870 Asheville had grown to fifteen 
hundred inhabitants, with eight or ten stores, and 
that influx of Northern travel had begun which was 
to give it its next wave of prosperity. 

In 1876 the first railroad triumphantly scaled the 
Blue Ridge, coming up from Spartanburg, South 
Carolina, ascending at the south of Tryon Mountain 
by way of the Pacolet Valley. But this feat so ex- 
hausted its resources that it was ten years before it 
got from Hendersonville to Asheville. Meantime, 
the state of North Carolina, in 1881, built a railroad 
that, approaching the mountains from Salisbury by 
way of Morgantown, followed the course of the first 



132 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

turnpike past Old Fort, surmounted the troublesome 
Blue Ridge in a series of curves and spirals and 
windings that was a feat of engineering, finally tun- 
neling through the mountain and continuing down 
the Swannanoa Valley to Biltmore, where, turning 
westward, it went on to Asheville, whence, in 1882, 
the line was completed to Paint Rock. The town now 
grew so rapidly that, in 1887, it proudly boasted of 
eight thousand inhabitants, and of having become 
one of the leading resorts of the South, thousands of 
tourists coming there from nearly every state and 
territory in the Union, while banks, hotels, clubs, 
schools, and churches appeared as by magic. About 
this time, also, the estate of Biltmore was purchased 
by Mr. Vanderbilt, the development of which was 
destined to play an important part in the civiliza- 
tion of the mountains. 

Then did the prophets again raise their voices, 
the guidebook of the day predicting within a decade 
or two a city of from twenty to thirty thousand per- 
manent residents, with new railroads, half a score 
of fine hotels, hills and valleys dotted with villas, 
and river-banks lined with manufacturing establish- 
ments of various kinds giving employment to thou- 
sands of operatives. Two decades have passed since 
then, and the prophecy has been fulfilled with a few 
extras thrown in in the way of costly waterworks, 
electric lights, street-cars, and automobiles. 

But the prosperity was not unbroken. For a 
number of years Asheville was a noted asylum for 
tuberculosis patients; then its transient population 



ASHEVILLE 133 

began to wane, its beautiful climate was declared 
not suited to the disease in its more advanced stages, 
rivals grew up in various parts of the country, the 
sick deserted, and the well were afraid to come be- 
cause so many invalids had been harbored there. 
But this reversal of fortune was short-lived, and 
Asheville, marked for a bigger destiny than that of a 
mere health resort, is beginning a new era with a fast 
increasing population whose interests are centred 
there. The prophets who cast roseate lights over the 
future are again predicting, and the only mistake 
these soaring souls are likely to make is that they 
may fly too low. For besides the suddenly awakened 
lumber industry, already representing millions of 
dollars, and the many new mining operations that 
are starting, the fine water-power is attracting man- 
ufacturers to the mountains, of which Asheville is, 
and always must be, the centre. 

That Buncombe yet exerts her old power over 
those who fall under the spell of her magic is shown 
by the presence of the Vance Monument in Pack 
Square, erected to the memory of Zebulon B. Vance, 
of Buncombe, governor and senator, but given by 
the people of to-day, largely assisted by Mr. George 
W. Pack, after whom the square is named, for though 
not a native of Buncombe Mr. Pack has enhanced 
the beauty and advanced the interests of the county 
with the greatest generosity. 

New men are coming, and new names are being 
added to the long list of enthusiasts who have worked 
and talked "for Buncombe," but the names of those 



134 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

early settlers, only a few of which have here been 
given, are preserved in the streams and valleys about 
Asheville, every name redolent of the history of the 
past. Crossing Davidson's River near Brevard, for 
instance, you will recall that the first county court 
was held at the log house of William Davidson at 
the "Gum Spring" on the Swannanoa River. And 
hurrying down the beautiful gorge of the French 
Broad on the railroad you pass Alexander, the prin- 
cipal trading station in those old days when traffic 
went on four legs, and was so heavy that Captain 
Alexander sometimes stood dealing out corn three 
days and nights in succession without time to go to 
his meals. 

To-day Asheville takes itself seriously as a city, 
and you are tempted to grant the assumption when 
you see automobiles driving through the streets as 
unconcernedly as in New York or Washington. 
Street-cars come from various directions to a socia- 
ble gathering in Pack Square, the heart of the city. 
These same cars take you to the confines of town, 
or up over neighboring mountain slopes to com- 
manding viewpoints. You go to Asheville to do your 
shopping and to see the world. There are imposing 
castle-like hotels there, modern and handsome houses 
on the residence streets, a great many small houses, 
and outlying districts where the cottages are occupied 
by colonies of negroes. Yet you can never make the 
mistake of supposing yourself in a real city when in 
Asheville, for you have only to lift your eyes to see 
the vast green forest pressing close about you and 



ASHEVILLE 135 

the mountains rolling away, peak after peak, to the 
far horizon. Besides, in spite of its urban airs there 
is the ever-conquering sun, shining on Asheville and 
drowning the mountains in its sweet Southern haze, 
there is the balmy languor of the South and the mel- 
low voice of the negro, to make you feel yourself in 
some secluded haven of rest, some happy escape 
from the turmoil and strife of a city, and this in 
spite of the census and the convenience of street- 
cars. 

But to the native mountaineer Asheville is not 
only a city, it is the city. Deep in the wilderness the 
people may never have heard of London or Paris, 
and but vaguely of New York, but Asheville is a 
reality. It is the true centre of civilization. Happen- 
ing one day to speak to a man, living near Roan 
Mountain, of the World's Fair that had been re- 
cently held in some, to him, unknow^n city, he showed 
a great deal of interest, but thought the location of 
the fair a mistake. "Why did n't they have it where 
everybody could go?" he complained; "why did n't 
they have it in Asheville." 

The hills of Asheville lie at an elevation of about 
two thousand feet, and are surrounded by mountains 
that stretch away in summits and ranges in whatever 
direction one may look. That beautiful form with 
the dome-like top, southwest of Asheville, is Mount 
Pisgah, and that ridge, a little lower and to the left 
of the summit, is the Rat. " Pisgah and the Rat ! " — 
the two names inexorably yoked together because 
the two shapes make one group, and the lower of 



136 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

them has a form so suggestive that there is no 
escape for it. They are so near Asheville as to 
attract immediate attention from the newcomer, 
who, according to his temperament, is shocked or 
amused at his first introduction to "Pisgah and the 
Rat." 

It is Asheville's position which has made it so long 
a favorite with those seeking these mountains for 
their pleasure. From its hills one looks away to peaks 
and ranges not too near and not too far, and one 
feels to the full that sense of elevation and of great 
sky expanse, which is so notable a part of the land- 
scape of this region that the name, "Land of the 
Sky," once felicitously bestowed upon it, has clung 
to it ever since. 

It would be tiresome to enumerate the mountains 
visible from the various hills of Asheville, one looks 
out upon so many, from the grand chain of the near 
Balsams on the west to the distant Craggy and Black 
Mountains towards the north, but one never gets 
tired of looking at them, and in these later days good 
roads lead away to parks and viewpoints, to the near 
and some of the distant villages, and to the arti- 
ficial lakes now being made in increasing numbers 
to supply scenery and mosquitoes to the tourist ; for 
the pleasure-seeking tourist has found the moun- 
tains, there is no escaping that momentous fact, 
and the mountaineer is everywhere waking up from 
his long slumber and beginning as it were to look 
about him. 

There is so much that is interesting in Asheville 



ASHEVILLE 137 

and the country roundabout that it Is easy to under- 
stand what Mr. Walker felt, for, like him, having 
once started, it is hard, even for a stranger, to stop 
"talking for Buncombe." 



XIV 

THE EARLY SETTLERS 

THE history of Asheville tells In part the story 
of the people, and in part answers two ques- 
tions always asked by the newcomer, Who are the 
"Mountain Whites," and how did they get here? 
The foot-hills, as we know, were settled early in the 
history of the state, and there was a sparse popula- 
tion on the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge long be- 
fore any one ventured to establish a home in the 
mountains that lay beyond that barrier, the first 
permanent settlers west of the Blue Ridge not ap- 
pearing until after the Revolutionary War, in the 
course of which the Indians were partly subdued. 
As time passed, the restless drifting of those people 
who came to the New World in search of homes 
brought one and another to the mountain country, 
fabled for its beauty, healthfulness, and possibil- 
ities; and while some of these wanderers drifted 
away again, others settled down and raised families 
who clung to the land of their birth, where their 
descendants are yet to be found. 

Since North Carolina was settled from "almost 
all the nations of Europe," one looks to find traces 
of this motley assembly among the present inhabit- 
ants of the mountains; and there are traces in the 
names and the features of the people, although the 



THE EARLY SETTLERS 139 

population in course of time became homogeneous 
for several reasons. For one thing, it was similar 
qualities and tastes that first drew the people to the 
mountains and afterwards kept them there ; also, by 
far the greater number of these emigrants came from 
the British Isles; and finally, the conditions of life 
in the mountains was such as still further to leaven 
all society to the same consistency. 

The early settlers came in that youth of the nation 
when land was free and hopes were high, younger 
sons sometimes, and business men of small property 
who had a dream of possessing a landed estate and 
"founding a family" in the New World, the fabled 
western mountains powerfully attracting these 
seekers for fame and fortune, most of whom in course 
of time were doomed to discover that owning a tract 
of land was not the only requisite to success. No- 
body got rich in the mountains, excepting the for- 
tunate few who had placed themselves in the line 
of traffic that, in course of time, was established be- 
tween the South and West; the poor soil was an 
insuperable obstacle, as were the social conditions 
induced by slavery. The settlers in the mountains 
did not realize their ambitions, but many of them 
found a home and peace and plenty, according to 
the modest standards of those days. 

Besides those well-to-do settlers who came to 
found a family, and formed the "quality" of the 
mountains, — who are not to be confounded with 
the "quality" of Charleston, which was quite an- 
other matter, — , there were others who, for various 



140 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

reasons and at different times, drifted in from the 
eastern lowlands as well as down from the North. 
Most of the writers tell us rather loosely that the 
Southern mountains were originally peopled with 
refugees of one sort and another, among whom were 
criminals exported to the New World from England, 
which, they might as well add, was the case with the 
whole of the newly discovered continent, America 
being the open door of refuge for the world's op- 
pressed. Hither fled dissenters from all sorts of es- 
tablished form, from French Hugenots to convicts, 
a company of seekers who, for the most part, were 
to fulfill a high destiny in the making of a nation. 

The popular writers, in speaking of the origin of 
the "Mountain Whites," rather insist upon the 
criminals, perhaps because of their sensational 
value, but one can find no evidence that these male- 
factors, many of them "indentured servants" sent 
over for the use of the colonies, made a practice of 
coming to the mountains when their term of serv^i- 
tude expired. And knowing the manner in which 
many of these white slaves, wretched precursors of 
the black slaves, were procured, without any other 
fault of theirs than their helplessness, one need not 
tremble with fear at thought of them. 

The truth is, the same people who occupied Vir- 
ginia and the eastern part of the Carolinas peopled 
the western mountains, English predominating, and 
in course of time there drifted down from Mrginia 
large numbers of Scotch-Irish, who, after the events 
of 1730, fled in such numbers to the New World, and 



THE EARLY SETTLERS 141 

good Scotch Highlanders, who came after 1745. In 
fact, so many of these stanch Northerners came to 
the North CaroHna mountains that they have given 
the dominant note to the character of the moun- 
taineer, remembering which may help the puzzled 
stranger to understand the peculiarities of the peo- 
ple he finds here to-day. The Celtic element has also 
strongly impressed a love of nature upon the people, 
as shown in their care of flowers and their pleasure 
in the beauties of the wilderness. They can tell you 
where to go for the finest views, and they know any 
peculiarity of rock or tree that may occur in their 
neighborhood. 

Emigration to the mountains, at one time consid- 
erable, practically ceased when the great West was 
opened up and the people flocked thither, no longer 
drawn to the less exciting region of the Southern 
mountains. The rnore enterprising of the North Caro- 
lina mountaineers also went West, we are told, thus 
leaving behind the conservative element, another 
fact rich in explanation of the people here to-day, 
and leaving also the less ambitious natures, as well 
as the weaker ones. The easy conditions of life here 
doubtless appealed to many who had not been 
endowed with the kind of strength required to wrest 
success from active life in the New World, some of 
them seekers after better things than they could 
hope for at home, gentle souls who were not tempted 
by the glittering prizes to be struggled for in more 
favored parts of the then unexplored continent. The 
rapid growth of slavery no doubt discouraged many, 



142 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

who, unable to succeed in the slave states, were 
crowded to the mountains, or else became the " Poor- 
White " of the South, who must not for a moment be 
confounded with the "Mountain White," the latter 
having brought some of the best blood of his native 
land to those blue heights. He brought into the 
mountains, and there nourished, the stern virtues 
of his race, including the strictest honesty, an old- 
fashioned self-respect, and an old-fashioned speech, 
all of which he yet retains, as well as a certain pride, 
which causes him to flare up instantly at any sus- 
picion of being treated with condescension, this 
pride being one of the most baffling things to the 
stranger, who never knows when he is going to run 
up against it. 

That the people are, for the most part, of English, 
Scotch, and Irish descent, their names show. And 
what good names some of them are, names that are 
crowned with honor out in the big world, — Hampton, 
Rogers, McClure, Morgan, Rhodes, Foster, Bradley, 
and dozens more; and to those fortunate ones, who 
out in the big world have gained fame and fortune, 
these Highlanders are undoubtedly related. The 
same blood flows in their veins, although they are 
here, and living back in the eighteenth century. 

Why have they remained in the mountains all 
these generations? The answer may be found, partly, 
at least, in the fact that in the beginning it was too 
easy for them to make a living, that is, such a living 
as contented them. Game was abundant, and their 
flocks and herds supplied their own wants upon the 



THE EARLY SETTLERS 143 

mountain "ranges" for practically eight months of 
the year. The reason for their remaining after the 
easy conditions of pioneer life had passed are, first, 
because those who remained were not those who 
came, but their descendants, born and raised in the 
wilderness, inured to its life of want and of freedom, 
and with no knowledge of any different life. And 
then, they were imprisoned in their mountain fast- 
nesses because of lack of means of communication, 
in part the result of obstacles presented by the slave 
states that surrounded them like an unnavigable 
sea; by lack of communication and by the condi- 
tions of life in the lowlands where the black man was 
king as well as slave. As time went on, they were 
forgotten by the rest of the world, which they in 
turn forgot. 

Excepting in a few places where people came a 
little while each summer for pleasure, and where the 
traffic of the mountains passed out, the mountaineer 
had no contact with the outside world. Even the 
coming of the summer visitors, who, in the early 
days, brought their own servants in the form of 
slaves, did not to any extent influence the lives of 
the natives. To get a living from the poor soil re- 
quired all their energies, the mild climate indispos- 
ing them to exertion beyond that needed to supply 
the merest necessaries of life. And so it happened 
that for a hundred years or more most of them were 
completely lost to the world. 

Bad blood there was among them as well as good, 
and brave men as well as weak ones. The brave as 



144 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

well as the bad blood sometimes worked out Its 
destiny In vendetta and "moonshlnlng," although 
there never existed In the North Carolina mountains 
the extensive and bloody feuds that distinguish the 
annals of Virginia and Kentucky. 

For more than a century, then, the mountain 
people lived as their pioneer forefathers had lived 
before them, retaining their language and their old 
customs modified only by the slow growth that 
comes In a fixed environment, and slowly spreading 
over the whole mountain region wherever a "cove " 
or a valley offered hope of sustenance, until to-day, 
there are some two hundred thousand of them in the 
North Carolina mountains alone. Little villages 
grew up where some natural advantage drew the 
people together, or near where the people from the 
lowlands chose to come for their summer outings. 
So while the rest of the world was advancing In a 
mad rush toward some unseen goal, the Southern 
mountaineer was simply living. The stranger who 
occasionally penetrated into his wilderness was 
amazed at the simplicity of life there, as well as at 
the native intelligence and shrewdness of a people 
so separated from all contact with the world of 
action. 

When a new tide In the affairs of man began to 
bear people again to the Southern mountains, this 
time In search of health, retirement, mines, lumber, 
or "business" of various kinds, the mountaineer 
appeared as a unique and puzzling personality, 
more or less difficult to cope with. Cautious, suspi- 



THE EARLY SETTLERS 145 

cious of new-fangled notions, and very suspicious of 
any attempt to "improve" him or his community, 
believing that what was good enough for his father 
was good enough for him, he stood like a bulwark 
against the advance of new ideas, and particularly 
against the intrusion of the rich and " bigotty " new- 
comer, who he imagined looked down on him and 
his simple ways. Hospitable to a fault among his 
own, and to the stranger whom he trusted, but resort- 
ing at need to more than questionable methods of 
freeing himself from the presence of an obnoxious 
neighbor, the Southern mountaineer was an enigma 
to the well-meaning but impolitic stranger, who, 
seeking to make for himself a beautiful home in the 
Southern mountains, was perhaps forced to leave 
the country before the exactions and the implacable 
hostlHty of the native people. If you are friends with 
the people, all is well, but if you are a mere customer 
of their commodities or their labor, then you must 
match not only your wits against theirs, but your 
ignorance against their knowledge of the moun- 
tains, with the odds seldom in your favor. 

The mountain people are many of them poor and 
ignorant, but the ill-clad man, who to the city vis- 
itor may look like a vagabond, is not to be treated 
as such; he knows some things the fine-appearing 
stranger does not know, and is well aware of the fact. 
The mountaineer is very old-fashioned, so old- 
fashioned that he values native shrewdness above 
what he calls "book-larnin"'; so old-fashioned that 
he thinks his neighbors as good as himself, and him- 



146 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

self as good as his neighbors, Irrespective of who has 
the biggest cornfield; and so old-fashioned that he 
believes progress to be a menace against his personal 
freedom, a thing to be combated at every point. His 
long-continued, almost communal life in a free wil- 
derness, where every one had a right to do what he 
pleased, — hunting, fishing, pasturing, even cutting 
down trees wherever it happened to suit his conven- 
ience, — made for him the acceptance of other ideas 
of property rights peculiarly difficult. He gladly 
sold his land to the newcomer whose slaughter of the 
forests he understood, but if the purchaser, instead 
of destroying, tried to preserve the forest land, pro- 
hibiting burning-over, pasturing, and common use 
of the territory — then there was trouble. Also the 
inalienable right to hunt and fish when and where 
he pleased was a part of the faith of the mountaineer, 
whose long sojourn in the wilderness had ingrained 
in him primitive ideas which the gradual fiUing-up 
of the country did not change, although his methods 
were rapidly exterminating both fish and game 
animals. 

But while the new pioneer among the settled na- 
tives of the Southern mountains had his troubles, 
the native himself, although it may not have been 
apparent at first, was changing. He learns slowly, 
but an idea once established grows and flourishes with 
astonishing vigor. In course of time the advantages 
of modern methods, particularly in business, dawn 
upon him, when, sometimes to the discomfiture of 
his unconscious teachers, he takes a hand and proves 



THE EARLY SETTLERS 147 

himself a winner in the new game. Indeed, nothing 
concerning these people is more interesting or more 
illuminating than the quickness and success with 
which they adopt the ways of the world when once 
their interest is aroused. That they are honest, 
intelligent, and efficient workers has been proved by 
all who have employed them with discrimination, 
and nowhere better than in the development of the 
large estate of Biltmore, which, the first enterprise 
of great importance to enter the mountains, won its 
way to success by help of the people, though not 
without many and unforeseen difficulties, principally 
in connection with controlling the land purchased. 



XV 

BILTMORE AND THE NEW ERA 

SOMEWHAT more than twenty years ago, before 
that phenomenal wave of prosperity, which is 
now sweeping over the South, had started, and while 
the country people were still living essentially as 
they lived when the first pioneers came to the moun- 
tains, there appeared among them, as if by magic, a 
perfect illustration of the advanced cultivation of 
the outer world. 

Unlike the transient and self-centred community 
of Flat Rock, that fell into the wilderness like a jewel, 
and made about as much impression, Biltmore, its 
antithesis, expressing the new era, was not inorganic, 
but living. Its roots were strong and full of sap. 
It had to grow, and the form of growth it took played 
an important part in the development of the moun- 
tains, a development which though just begun is 
rapidly changing the life of this region. 

What the native people, after living a life of stag- 
nation for so long, most needed was an ideal — a 
point, as it were, at which to aim, and a knowledge 
of how to work, and how to care for their lands. 
These Biltmore gave them. It showed them, not 
only perfect results and how those results were ob- 
tained, but, what was of paramount importance, it 
made the people themselves the instruments that 



BILTMORE AND THE NEW ERA 149 

produced the results. The thirty miles of macad- 
amized road traversing the estate, and the hundreds 
of miles of dirt road that make accessible all parts of 
the large forest connected with the estate, were made 
by the mountain people, the real significance of 
which lies in the fact that these roads, made in the 
country where the people themselves live, and in 
which the grave difficulties of road-making have 
been overcome by scientific methods, have taught 
the people of the mountains how to make their 
roads, as well as something of the advantages of 
good roads and the necessity of caring systematically 
for them. Then there was the stock farm where do- 
mestic animals were cared for, and where were learned 
the advantages of modern sanitary methods as well 
as of high-bred animals ; and there were the gardens 
where new methods and new products were intro- 
duced to the workers ; and there was the forest where 
the astonished mountaineer was to discover that a 
tree is as well worth careful raising as a cabbage. 

It was the scale upon which the work was done, 
more even than the nature of the work itself, that 
gave it its substantial value; for each year young 
men from all parts of the mountains were employed 
at Biltmore, not by tens, or by hundreds, but by 
thousands. They were put to work and, what was 
of equal value in their development, they were sub- 
jected to an almost military discipline. For the first 
time in generations they were compelled to be 
prompt, methodical, and continuous in their efforts. 
And of this there was no complaint. Scotch blood 



150 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

may succumb to enervating surroundings, but at 
the first call to battle it is ready. Not only did the 
men do the manual labor, but, as time went on, the 
most capable of them became overseers in the vari- 
ous departments, until finally all the directors of this 
great estate, excepting a few of the highest officials, 
were drawn from the ranks of the people, who proved 
themselves so trustworthy and capable that in all 
these years only three or four of Biltmore's moun- 
taineer employees have had to be dismissed for 
inefficiency or bad conduct. 

Nor was the dissemination of new ideas confined 
to the people at work on the estate. Milk from Bilt- 
more appeared at Asheville in glass bottles, while 
Biltmore butter shot a golden ray into the lives of 
discriminating visitors to Asheville. To-day all the 
milk in Asheville is delivered to the better class of 
customers in glass bottles, and the country dairies 
have been remodeled to meet the growing demand 
for cleanliness; and for it to be said of a dairyman, 
"He got his training at Biltmore and follows Bilt- 
more methods," is the same as a gold medal from 
the last World's Congress. When such novelties as 
spinach and celery appeared in the Asheville market, 
the mountaineer scorned them until he discovered 
that people really did buy them, when he began to 
take interest. In this way gradually came better 
varieties of all the vegetables, until the Asheville 
market was transformed. And whether Biltmore 
really was the mother of every new good thing that 
came, it at least got the credit for being. 



BILTMORE AND THE NEW ERA 151 

Of the many valuable enterprises of Biltmore, the 
most important to the mountain people has doubtless 
been the preservation and administration of the large 
tract of forest land, more than one hundred thous- 
and acres in extent, connected with the estate, and, 
because it lies partly on Pisgah Mountain, known as 
"Pisgah Forest." Not only were the virgin forests 
of this tract put into trained hands for their perpetu- 
ation and improvement, but the cut-over lands be- 
longing to the estate were reforested and cared for 
according to the best science of the day on the sub- 
ject. The woodland was not only preserved, it was 
utilized, supplying at one time quantities of firewood 
to Asheville, and, as it can bear it, lumber and bark 
are removed for other uses. The forests are traversed 
by roads, — thus making lumbering easier, more 
successful, and less harmful to the prosperity of the 
woods. And what is of utmost importance to the 
people, the trees are scientifically preserved by moun- 
tain men trained for the purpose, these forest rangers 
thus learning the needs and uses of a North Carolina 
forest, a drill whose value in this era when the 
North Carolina forests have suddenly become of 
vast importance and great value, cannot be over- 
estimated in bringing the mountaineer not only to a 
knowledge of forest administration, but to a change 
of mind in regard to the treatment of his own wooded 
land. The North Carolina highland er may be slow 
to take an idea, but once firmly lodged in his mind, 
it is there to stay, and the rapidity with which he 
acts, when once it dawns upon him that a given 



152 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

action is the thing, fairly takes one's breath, particu- 
larly the breath of one who has rested in his midst 
before enlightenment had disturbed his slumbrous 
existence. And what an influence must the training 
of thousands of young men in practical forestry have 
in educating those who not only have the greater 
part of the forest land in their keeping, but who will 
soon be needed to administer and beautify the new 
national park! 

It was at Biltmore that the "Good Roads Move- 
ment" was started which has made such wonderful 
progress in the state for the past few years. Here also 
was born the idea of the great Southern National 
Forest which has just become a reality, and here 
years ago for their education came some of those 
most deeply interested in the preservation of our 
natural forests, because Biltmore was at that time 
the only place in the United States where scientific 
forestry was practiced on a scale large enough to be 
of value to them. 

Pisgah Forest, besides its other uses, is also a 
game preserve, so that the red deer once more 
bounds along its shady aisles, while the wild turkey 
and ruffed grouse grow and multiply, and flocks of 
quails fearlessly trot along the road ahead of your 
horse. What added grace belongs to the forest 
where the quails are not afraid of us! Not that the 
wild denizens of Pisgah are wholly undisturbed, or 
so one infers from the recent phenomenal increase of 
game in the Asheville market during the open season, 
and if the venison enjoyed by visitors to Asheville 



BILTMORE AND THE NEW ERA 153 

does not always come out of the remote wilder- 
nesses of the Balsam or Smoky Mountains, that is 
a technicality which does not disturb the pleasure 
the stranger takes in the delicacies that come his 
way. 

Related, in subject at least, to the forests are the 
nurseries and gardens of Biltmore for the propaga- 
tion of plants suitable to the region ; not only exotics 
but all those charming growths of the mountains 
that make the country itself so engaging, and many 
of which are equally adapted for use in other parts 
of the world, quantities being shipped to the North 
as well as to Europe; for the gardens and nurseries 
of Biltmore, besides supplying materials for the 
estate itself, also supply large numbers of plants to 
the outside world. These gardens and nurseries, as 
well as the greenhouses, are now almost entirely 
under the care of mountain men, some of whom have 
developed remarkable ability in working with plants. 
Besides the natural forests of the estate, and the 
nurseries and gardens, with their many choice 
exotics and native growths, a living book for the 
botanist, there is a botanical library which contains 
besides books several herbaria, among which latter 
is the collection of Chapman, author of the "Flora 
of the Southern United States." 

The first question asked when a stranger comes to 
Asheville, and again when he goes back home, is, 
"Have you seen Biltmore?" — and if he has not, it 
is his own fault, for the extensive grounds of the 
estate, covering some ten thousand acres, are open 



154 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

to the public two or three days every week. Car- 
riages enter from the village of Biltmore, which 
was so named by Mr. Vanderbilt at the time of the 
purchase of the estate. 

The merely curiousvisitormay not divine the real 
charm of the place, may even be disappointed at the 
lack of display there, to him a large part of the 
carefully planned grounds seeming in no way differ- 
ent from the rest of the country, excepting the roads, 
which are perfect. But let the nature-lover or the 
poet in any other form enter these roads winding 
through the apparently untouched forest, and he will 
feel something that he does not feel in the wilderness, 
something that moves him as a great picture moves 
a sensitive spirit, and for the same reason. Back of 
the painted picture throbs the universal soul of man, 
and in the work of the great landscape artist is felt 
the aspiration of the human heart. For these grounds 
were planned and to an extent perfected in detail by 
America's greatest landscape gardener, whose work 
in our public parks is a source of national pride. 

Just why his surroundings produce so pleasing an 
effect upon him, the visitor to Biltmore may not 
know, but if he is an artist he will know, and if he is 
somewhat acquainted with plant life he will soon 
add, to the general impression of beauty, another 
in which his pleasure is increased by discovering, 
among the apparently wild and untrained growths 
along the roadside, a tree, a bush, or a plant that 
blends with the rest, enhancing the effect, but which 
is not a native of the mountains. Perhaps among 



BILTMORE AND THE NEW ERA 155 

these aliens he may note a very rare exotic, but it is 
not displayed. Perhaps not one in a hundred will 
recognize or notice it, yet its presence gives the per- 
fect touch to the place it adorns, and even without 
his knowing it, gives pleasure to the sympathetic 
passer-by. These beautiful exotics, placed in the 
right spot to strenghten a group of trees, to empha- 
size the greens of a mass of foliage, or to add a sudden 
glow of color, are gems that reward the careful eye 
of the botanist, though most of the plant life that 
hedges the drives of Biltmore is the wild life of the 
forest skillfully persuaded to create a desired impres- 
sion, without betraying to the most careful observer 
that its perfections are not wholly due to the benefi- 
cence of nature. Look up that charming little valley 
— why does it bring a smile and a memory of some- 
thing sweet and dim and poetic? Nobody seems to 
have touched it, and yet it makes one feel as one 
never feels in a wild mountain gorge, no matter 
how well one may love the gorge. The bottom of 
this valley is smooth and green, its sides as they 
ascend are clothed first in bushes and low-growing 
things, then with trees, the largest at the upper edge. 
You do not see this at first, perhaps you will not ana- 
lyze it at all, seeing only a lovely valley with rocky, 
shrubby walls irregularly and charmingly clad with 
nature's wild growths that seem to reach up into the 
very sky in noble sweep. It is so sweet, so natural, 
so sympathetic a part of the landscape that you can 
scarcely believe it is one of those rude ravines that 
furrow the mountains, and which, charming as they 



156 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

often are, yet lack the perfection of this apparently 
wild glen. 

At Biltmore one gets ideas of what to do with one's 
own glorified acre of wild land, to make it yield the 
highest return in pleasure. With how little labor and 
how many compensations in happiness might not a 
thousand small places be converted into dreams 
of beauty! Nature here is so enchanting when left 
alone, or even when abused, what might happen if 
her efforts were helped by loving hands ! 

With the passing of years, the untiring industry 
and devotion lavished on Biltmore have produced 
the result seen here to-day, a result that money 
alone could not have produced. And with the pass- 
ing of time the mountain people have changed, too. 
They speak with a new note of appreciation of the 
estate from which so many of them have drawn or 
still draw sustenance, and from which they have 
received so abundantly that which is worth infinitely 
more to them than the week's wages. They are also 
beginning to understand the new business methods 
that are now manifesting themselves in so many 
ways in different parts of the mountains, and for 
the coming of which Biltmore, in a sense, paved 
the way. 

The grounds and roads of Biltmore are an object 
lesson, not only to the natives, but to every stranger 
who comes to these mountains to make himself a 
home, an object lesson that serves to show what 
could be done with a small holding as well as with a 
large one, and with almost any kind of problem the 



BILTMORE AND THE NEW ERA 157 

mountains offer, so varied is the contour of this large 
pleasure-ground. 

Biltmore house stands three miles from the 
entrance gate, on one of those high open places from 
which one gets that sense of space and sky that has 
fastened the name, "Land of the Sky," so firmly 
on this region. It is a large and stately mansion, sug- 
gesting a French chateau, and the terrace upon which 
it stands is supported by a noble stone wall that re- 
minds one of the impressive rampart at Windsor 
Castle, or of those great walls that guard the medi- 
aeval castles on the hills of Italy; though this is no 
rampart for defense, and the world about it is 
neither English nor Italian, the exquisite mountains 
that stretch away, range above range, belonging 
distinctively to the New World. And the house, too, 
has played its part in the development of the people. 
While the men and boys were learning important 
lessons out of doors, the young girls were being 
trained in the same manner indoors. And here, too, 
the scale upon which the training was given has con- 
stituted its far-reaching influence, which is its chief 
value, hundreds of young girls owing to Biltmore 
their first preparation for the new life which is so 
fast coming to the mountains. 

Besides, there is the "Biltmore Industries," a 
school for girls and women as well as for boys, which 
has also opened the doors of the new era to many a 
waiting heart, but a consideration of which belongs 
to another place. In short, Biltmore, appearing 
upon the scene when the industrial development of 



158 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the South was about to begin, had the opportunity 
and the task, in many ways difficult, of giving the 
people their first training In the ways of the world. 
But it has done more than this. Besides disciplin- 
ing the people and giving them an object lesson in 
the practical development of the natural resources 
of the country, It has, as we have seen, — and this 
will seem to many Its highest value, — shown how 
to beautify the mountains while transforming them. 

Of course Biltmore Is not the only Influence which 
has been at work transforming the life and work of 
the people. Every one who has come from the out- 
side world to live In the mountains, and who has 
employed, or taught, or come In any kind of real con- 
tact with the native people, has had a share In their 
advancement. There are many, too, who have lived 
and worked directly for them, but there has been no 
other single Influence so large, so varied, and so far- 
reaching as Biltmore, and none other has dealt so 
practically and so thoroughly with the all-Important 
subject of forestry. 

The large hotels at Toxaway In the " Sapphire 
Country," with a holding of twenty-eight thousand 
acres, have employed the mountain people In clear- 
ing the land, building the dams, and otherwise 
preparing for the lakes that were made by flooding 
valleys. They have also made roads, but on a com- 
paratively small scale, and their forest is held as a 
game preserve, where deer are plenty, but where no 
forestry is practiced beyond keeping out fires. 

It Is the presence of Biltmore, the Toxaway hotels, 



BILTMORE AND THE NEW ERA 159 

and the many people of culture who within the last 
twenty years have come to the mountains to make 
their homes, that are the hope, one might almost say 
the prophecy, of the future. For as a consequence of 
the new prosperity of the South, throngs of people 
are pouring into the mountains. The bewildering 
rapidity with which cotton-mills have sprung up all 
through the cotton country has directly and indi- 
rectly put money into the pockets of thousands of 
people who never before had been able to spend a 
summer at the mountains; and it is these people 
who, but for the check and educating power of other 
influences, would put upon the new development of 
the mountains the hopeless stamp of mediocrity 
which it would take generations to efface. The old- 
time picturesque house of the mountaineer is bound 
to go. It cannot be modified to suit the demands of 
modern comfort. The ugly structure that, among 
the recently prosperous and ignorant classes, is so 
prone to succeed it, has already been anticipated 
by a style of architecture simple, pleasing, and in 
harmony with the scenery, showing every one that 
it is as easy to build an attractive house as an ugly 
one. 

It is the highest type of progress that one wishes 
to see at work in the mountains, the spirit that trans- 
forms by enhancing instead of diminishing beauty, 
the spirit that converts steep, rough, and dangerous 
roads into winding highways, and that banishes the 
unnecessary scourge of fever that each summer in- 
vades the farthest recesses of the mountains. And 



i6o THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

this spirit may animate not only the man of millions 
who comes to build a stately pleasure-house in these 
enchanting mountains, or place a group of palatial 
hotels on some choice eminence, but it may equally 
animate every one who owns a piece of land, be it 
ever so small. 

Nothing can stay the march of progress that has 
now begun. The old order is passing. Let the new 
order be better than the old. If the charming hoyden 
we call Picturesqueness must go, let her nobler sister 
Beauty take her place. And whatever may be the 
future history of Biltmore, if the mountains con- 
tinue to develop in the direction of sanitation, safety, 
and ever-increasing beauty, the honor belongs to her 
of having been the guiding star in the difficult pass- 
age from the old order to the new. May the pro- 
phecy which she seems to hold be fulfilled in the 
new era which appears, to those looking on, to be 
approaching these mountains of beauty radiantly, 
like the rising sun. 



XVI 

THE PEOPLE 

TO come from the turmoil of city life to these 
mountains is like taking a journey back into 
the history of the past. Notwithstanding the changes 
begun by the recent intrusion of the outside world, life 
here In many ways is yet primitive. One breathes 
fresh air and gets down to elemental things. 

"Stoves?" said an old man; " I ain't never owned 
a stove and I don't never aim to. I don't see no use 
in stoves noway. I would n't have one in the house. 
You can't bake bread in a stove. I don't want nar' 
thing but meal and water mixed together and baked 
in the fire. I don't want salt in the bread. I was 
raised on that bread and it is the best in the world." 
Imagine a condition where one's physical wants 
are reduced to corn-meal and water! 

Because the people are so obviously untutored, 
the chance visitor is prone to imagine the whole 
mountain a favorable missionary field, but finds it 
a field that contains many disconcerting surprises. 
A favorite grievance of the average good Samaritan 
is the "ingratitude" of the people. They take what 
you do for them as a matter of course, if they take it 
at all, and do not often say " thank you." What the 
donors do not understand is, that it takes a good deal 
of social training to enable any one to say "thank 



i62 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

you" gracefully, or to say it at all. "Why do you 
give me this?" asked a woman, turning the little 
trinket over in her hand with a pleased and puzzled 
expression. "Nobody ever made me a present be- 
fore. I have heard of presents, but I never had one." 
How could any one with such a narrow range of 
experience say "thank you"? 

Frequently well-meant efforts to help the people 
are proudly resented. 

"Why won't you wear the aprons I gave you?" 
a Northern lady asked the young mountain girl 
who was living with her, and with whom she had 
tried her best to make friends. 

The girl refused to answer for some time, then 
said : — 

"Well, if you really want to know, I will tell you. 
I can't afford to buy aprons such as that." 

" But I don't want you to buy them ; I want to give 
them to you." 

"Well, that's just it. I have n't got anything to 
give you, and I don't want to take where I can't 
give." 

Another stranger fed a mountain woman, who, 
having come to town to "trade," stopped at the 
door tired and hungry, to sell her butter. Next day 
the woman came back with a chicken. 

"Why, no!" said the lady, "I cannot take your 
chicken. I gave you the dinner." 

"Say you did?" 

"Yes." 

"Say you gave me the dinner?" 




GOING HOME 



THE PEOPLE 163 

"Yes." 

"Well, if you can give me a dinner, why can't I 
give you a chicken?" 

The unsanitary condition of the poorer homes 
which so excites the genteel visitor, although bad 
enough, is less important than it seems to those ac- 
customed to sewer-drained cities; for natural causes 
here — the hot sun, the free winds, the wide spaces, 
and the scattered population — prevent the conse- 
quences that follow similar habits in crowded and 
shut-in places. The people are fairly healthy, though, 
as a rule with exceptions, not long-lived, and while 
they are young their mode of life is not felt by them 
as a hardship, the burden of it falling upon the sick 
and aged. 

The most frequent disorder among them is dys- 
pepsia, for which the pale-green, or saffron-yellow, 
brown-spotted, ring-streaked and speckled luxury 
known as "soda biscuits" undoubtedly bears a 
heavy burden of blame. These wonders of the culi- 
nary art are freely eaten by all who can afford to 
buy white flour, and their odorous presence is often 
discernible from afar as you approach a house at 
mealtime. Typhoid fever is another frequent vis- 
itant, though the "mountain fever," as it is here 
called, appears in a light form that seldom results 
fatally. 

When looking at the average highlander with his 
bent back, his narrow shoulders and lean frame, one 
suspects that back of everything the people are 
starving — not so much physically as mentally and 



i64 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

spiritually. For it seems to be just as necessary to 
escape from primitive life as it is necessary to go back 
to it occasionally for rejuvenation. The unfed mind 
reacts upon the body. The pretty girls too often 
become old women at the age of thirty, with a 
"hurtin' in the breast," that no doctor's stuff can 
assuage. One suspects the " hurtin' " of being really 
in the heart. They are generally grandmothers at an 
age when a New England matron is still discussing 
the psychological development of her infants at the 
mothers' club. 

The slender lads with their gentle manners and 
friendly eyes become bent old men when men out 
in the world are in the prime of life. The forest is 
filled with divine fragrance. The mountains are 
dreams of beauty, but the man who looks out has 
no future. Often he cannot even read. He knows 
nothing but how to be kind. But he does not know 
that anything is wanting. He laughs and takes life 
as he finds it, thinking his lot the common lot of man. 
Having no conception of a world different from his 
own, a city to his imagination is a mountain village 
with a few more houses. A native of the Grandfather 
region, proudly showing his spring of cold water to 
a Northern visitor, not long since, said politely, "I 
reckon you-all have got good springs in Boston, too " ; 
but his tone of voice indicated clearly enough which 
land he believed to be most highly blessed in its 
springs. 

The mountain home is generally well filled with 
children, and the grandmother, who is about the age 



THE PEOPLE 165 

her daughter looks to be, is vastly proud of her num- 
erous descendants, though she sometimes has diffi- 
culty in remembering their full names, or even their 
numbers, and one of them, trying to count up her 
grandchildren, once said, "It seems like there are 
fifteen, but I will have to study jest how many." 

The children take care of themselves, and where 
there are so many a few more or less makes no differ- 
ence, hence orphans are received into an already 
overflowing home with a cordiality that might put 
to shame the exclusiveness practiced in some other, 
and richer, parts of the world. Also illegitimate 
children are cared for with an affection equal to that 
bestowed upon their better credentialed brothers and 
sisters. When a young girl presents her parents with 
an unaccountable grandchild, the neighbors politely 
refer to it as an accident. The number of those 
among the poorer people who have "met up with 
an accident" is not inconsiderable, which perhaps 
accounts for the fact that so little importance is 
attached to it. The girl generally marries later, 
when her first-born takes his or her place in the 
family circle on the same footing as the rest, though, 
of course, among the better class of people, morality 
is esteemed the same here as elsewhere. 

The children share the responsibility and work 
of the home from the start, and in the remoter and 
poorer districts are as wild as rabbits. Sometimes 
half-grown children are unable to pronounce their 
own names so as to be understood. As a result 
names have actually been changed, an instance of 



i66 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

which is the Madcap family. You naturally inquire 
into the behavior of a family with such a name, and 
failing to find anything to justify it in those imme- 
diately under observation, you go back a generation, 
and finally, through much inquiry, find that the 
name was undoubtedly corrupted from Metcalf , and 
that Johnny Madcap is not a wild young blade nor 
in any way to blame for his name. But it must not 
be supposed that all the Metcalf s have been thus 
metamorphosed; only those poorer owners of the 
name who have gone deep into the wilderness, and 
there lost themselves. 

The little children, like flowers in the forest, often 
have the prettiest and most unusual names. Of 
course there are John and Mary and Tom, but 
there are also Mossy Bell, Luna Geneva, Vallerie 
May, Luranie Carriebel, Pearlamina Alethy Ivadee, 
and a thousand others like them. Oftentimes the 
poorer the family the more fanciful the children's 
names, as though, this being the only inheritance, 
the parents wished to make it as rich as possible. 
One wonders where these names come from until one 
discovers that certain women of the mountains, gifted 
in this matter, collect the pretty names they hear, 
or think of, or read in the story papers that fall into 
their hands, drawing on their stock in behalf of their 
friends. And is it patriotism or poetry that invest the 
female members of one family with the charming 
names of Texas, Missouri, and Indiana? Sometimes 
a child will have half a dozen of these ornamental 
names bestowed upon him — or more generally her, 



THE PEOPLE 167 

as the greatest play of fancy is exercised in the selec- 
tion of names for the little girls. It is one of the 
pleasant memories of the mountains, these little 
human flowers with poetical names, that one finds 
everywhere in the woods. 

The principal recreation of the country people is 
visiting. They go long distances for the purpose, and 
the smallest cabin is never too small to welcome home 
the married sons and daughters who have come with 
their families to stay awhile with "Mammy" and 
" Pappy." Nor is the poorest home too poor to wel- 
come with open arms half a dozen or more people 
appearing quite unannounced from some distant 
region to stay a few days. The only pig is slaugh- 
tered, the bean-pot Is filled, and everybody has a 
delightful time, hosts as well as guests, although the 
days of "visiting" may consume the provisions for 
half the winter. 

In the villages there are the ordinary amusements 
of young people: parties, dancing, picnics, "box 
suppers," where the girls fill the boxes with fried 
chicken, bread, and cake, and the boys buy them; 
and of course there is music, the violin and guitar 
being the most popular instruments. In the remoter 
districts there are fewer diversions. " Huskln's" are 
common everywhere, and In some sections there is 
a form of entertainment known as "candy-breaking," 
where the boys buy the candy, and everybody eats it. 

The country music is oftenest heard in the cool 
of the evening, when the day's work Is done and all 
sit about the blazing logs of the big fireplace. How 



i68 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

pleasantly comes back to memory one such scene! 
The only light comes from the fireplace, and dark 
shadows steal about the room as the fire flickers. 
In the glare of the burning logs sits a youth with his 
violin, rendering with zest the compositions of a local 
celebrity, — "Sourwood Mountain," "Cotton-eyed 
Joe," "The Huckleberry Bush," "The Blue-eyed 
Girl," "Old Uncle Joe," "Aunt Sally Good'in, A 
pot full of pie, And an oven full of puddin'." With 
what enthusiasm he plays them, one after the other! 
And as he plays, coal-black Jim sits in front of him, 
knee to knee, and "beats straws." The youth can- 
not keep time without this unique assistance, which 
is rendered by means of a piece of broom-straw held 
between the fingers of the right hand and struck 
against one string at the neck of the violin, while the 
musician plays. Black Jim also manages to beat 
time with his feet without disturbing the rhythmical 
tang, tang of the straw, or distracting the player. 
"Beating straws" seems to be confined to a section 
on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge, where, how- 
ever, it is in common use. After the violin solo, black 
Jim dances the "stag dance" for us, first retiring to 
put on his shoes, for though he says he can dance 
better without them, the splinters of civilization 
have to be considered, a dirt floor being the original 
and proper foundation for the dance. He dances 
very solemnly, oppressed no doubt by the presence 
of strangers, and in the heat of the fire his face pres- 
ently shines like polished ebony. 

Since the family get up with the sun, or consider- 



THE PEOPLE 169 

ably before that, all soon go to rest — the visitors 
in the parlor where stands the best bed. There is a 
carpet on the floor, and a round table in the middle 
of the room holds a lamp and, as ornaments, a dozen 
oyster shells. 

One's ablutions are supposed to be performed in a 
tin basin standing on a bench on the porch, the fam- 
ily taking turns, but when, unused to the customs 
of the country, one begs for some water in one's own 
room, a basinful of it is promptly brought in and set 
down on the hearth. In the morning the kind host- 
ess appears with a large wooden pail of water, fresh 
and icy from the spring, a long-handled gourd dipper 
floating on its sparkling surface. A cold bath with a 
vengeance ! 

The women have one consolation which the stran- 
ger visiting their beautiful mountains conscientiously 
deplores, forgetting how short a time It is since his 
own ancestors of both sexes comforted themselves 
with snuff, even if kings and queens happened to be 
numbered among them. In the pocket of many a 
mountain woman and pretty young girl to-day hides 
the snuff-box. It Is not a silver ornament beautifully 
chased or set with jewels, however, but the little tin 
box In which the snuff Is bought. Nor Is snuff taken 
after the manner of former generations of snuff- 
takers. Here the people "dip," that is to say, a stick 
chewed into a brush at one end and kept for the 
purpose Is dipped into the snuff and rubbed over 
the gums and teeth. It is not a pretty practice, but 
It seems to afford peculiar satisfaction, enormous 



170 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

quantities of snuff being consumed in this manner. 
When a mountain woman refers to her " toothbrush " 
the snuff-stick is what she means. She says that to 
dip snuff preserves the teeth and strengthens the 
constitution. A young girl scarcely grown out of 
childhood gravely told how thin and sickly she had 
been until her father brought her some snuff and 
ordered her to use it. The child had not wanted to 
take it, having a natural repugnance to the habit, 
but her father insisted, and she had no sooner begun 
its use, so she said, than she began to improve until 
she finally became strong and plump like the rest of 
the girls! 

The men do not use snuff as a rule, nor do many 
of them smoke, though they sometimes chew. To- 
bacco is not raised to any extent in the mountains, 
and the snuff habit is the one extravagance of the 
people, who back in the mountains are not ashamed 
of it, but near the villages they are getting sensitive 
and hide the snuff-stick when they see you coming. 
The first step, no doubt, in the passing of the snuff- 
box. That the habit is not a polite one is recognized 
even out in the country where you are informed it is 
the " illest manners" to dip snuff in company. In the 
villages, although the people may not have "all the 
modern improvements" in their houses, neither do 
they, to the same extent, use the snuff-stick, nor fol- 
low the more homely manners and habits of the 
country people, although they closely resemble them 
in one respect — they show the same spirit of kindli- 
ness to each other and to the harmless stranger. 



XVII 

THE SPEECH OF THE MOUNTAINS 

PERHAPS the first thing a stranger notices upon 
meeting the people is their quaint speech, for 
although they speak "English," one cannot talk 
with them five minutes without hearing something 
new and strange, their language besides other pecu- 
liarities containing many an odd phrase and word 
that returns us to the language of Shakespeare's day, 
or even to that of the "Canterbury Tales." Not 
that these people have remained incarcerated in the 
mountains from Chaucer's time, but they came across 
the seas a century and a half or more ago from coun- 
try places in England, Scotland, and Ireland where 
the old words were yet strongly intrenched, though 
nowhere else in this new world has the language of 
the past survived to the same extent as in the South- 
ern mountains and the adjoining foothills. 

Since the mountain people were as a rule separ- 
ated from contact with the negro, their speech dif- 
fers, therefore, from that of the Southern lowlanders, 
and while it is true that the people of the whole 
mountain region, as well as those of the foothills, 
have many idioms in common, yet the dialect of the 
natives of the North Carolina mountains differs 
from that of the people of the Virginia and Ken- 
tucky mountains, and other sections of the high- 



172 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

lands, as indeed slight variations occur even in 
valleys separated by rough mountains, or among 
people living on opposite sides of the same moun- 
tain, so little communication has there been between 
those thus separated. 

Of course, like all who live in the backwoods, the 
mountaineer is untrammeled by the rules of the 
grammarian, although he adheres strictly to a few 
rules of his own, and to-day his is the most purely 
"American" of any language in the United States, it 
having grown from its English source, untouched by 
contact with a motley world. 

"Farwel, for I ne may no longer dwelle," says 
Chaucer in the "Knight's Tale." "He don't never 
say farwell if he can holpen it," says the North 
Carolina mountaineer, using Chaucer's double nega- 
tive and Chaucer's "farwell" and "holpen" in the 
same breath. 

That "yonder" is in common use you know when 
you hear a baby lisp out, "yonda comes a cow," 
another pointing out the interesting fact that "yon- 
da's a hen with agangof little chickens," and "yon" 
has not been relegated to the realm of poetry where 
the child tells you that his cousin lives "yon side the 
mountain." 

In some places the people still go to the "milking 
gap" to milk the cows. "Least" as a diminutive, 
and "nary" are in such common use that one soon 
ceases to notice them. "I've made a kiverlid for 
each of my daughters but the least one, and I ain't 
made her nar'," says a woman you know. "I've 



THE SPEECH OF THE MOUNTAINS 173 

suffered three years in that house," another who is 
moving her household goods will tell you, but in 
your sympathetic inquiries as the cause of her misery 
you learn that she had simply been waiting there 
until her own house was built. " Some people seem to 
have a sleight at it and can chop good," says a 
woman discoursing upon the subject of firewood, 
while animals "use" certain places when they fre- 
quent them or live in them, as you learn when told 
that "there's a rat using in that hole," or "a bear 
uses on that mountain." 

A universal anachronism is the use of the personal 
pronoun "hit," instead of "it." The baby, for in- 
stance, is "hit," from one end of the mountains to 
the other. Shall one ever forget the dissertation on 
infants given by a young person of four to the visitor 
who suddenly dropped into her home one day ! She 
sat on the edge of the bed swinging her legs, her 
round black eyes shining with excitement as she 
described the advent of her baby brother. "Hit was 
the b-1-ack-est, me-an-est lookin' little thing you 
ever see, and," with unutterable scorn, "hit was a 
boy ! And," with, if possible, yet deeper disapproval, 
"hit is a boy yet!'' "Hit" is sometimes used until 
the child is several years old, particularly if there is 
no newcomer to usurp the title and " Babe," applied 
as a temporary provision pending the finding of a 
suitable name, often clings to the youngest son for 
life. 

It is not necessary to go into the remoter fastnesses 
of the mountains to hear quaint expressions. The 



174 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

speech of a people is the last thing to yield to new 
customs, and in all the villages, even in Asheville, 
one constantly hears unfamiliar and interesting 
words and phrases. If you do not know what is 
meant when a mountaineer selling you peaches asks 
for a " poke " to put them in, the fault is in the times. 
Your English ancestors, several generations back, 
would have known and at once produced — not a 
"paper poke" in those days, but a sack of some sort. 

" Peart" is a survivor from bygone times when its 
use was perfectly proper, and " tolerable " in the form 
of "tollable" almost usurps the place of "fairly" or 
"rather" as an adverb. "She's tollable peart," you 
are told when inquiring after the health of an absent 
member of the family. It is seldom that any one ad- 
mits to being " stout," "jest tollable" being the polite 
limit of health. "Tollable by grace" is sometimes 
heard, and when a woman tells you she is "poorly, 
thank God," you feel that piety can go no farther. 

"Ill," retains the old meaning that survives with 
us only in the proverb of the ill wind, and it is com- 
pared, some snakes being iller than others and the 
king snake the illest of all. We have "moonshiny 
nights" in the mountains just as they had in Eng- 
land in Addison's time, and as they doubtless have 
in the country there to-day. Relatives are "kin" 
here, those closely related being "nigh kin," "nigh" 
as a rule everywhere taking the place of "near" or 
"nearly." When the ground is slippery it is "slick." 
A calf frisking along the roadside you hear referred 
to as an "antic calf." " It is big enough to hold quite 



THE SPEECH OF THE MOUNTAINS 175 

a content," one is told of a parcel concerning which 
the speaker is speculating. " Yes, I 've a nice chance 
of flowers," a woman modestly admits when you 
admire her little garden. Here we "aim" to do a 
thing, and "claim" that we have done it. 

When you hear one of your friends spoken of by 
a highlander as being "common" you are puzzled, 
to say the least, until you learn that the word is 
the most complimentary possible, retaining its orig- 
inal meaning as understood when we speak of 
the "common people," the "common good." The 
"commoner," you are, that is, the more you treat 
the people as though you were one of them, the 
better they like you. And to be called "homely" is 
also a fine compliment, in a land where the expres- 
sion means that the homely one makes people feel at 
home, takes good care of the home, is, in short, what 
old-fashioned people of the outside world sometimes 
call "a home body." 

Children "favor" their parents, though a peculiar 
form of the word appears when you are told that a 
certain young girl is "the likliest favored person 
that ever came down from the North." But " favor" 
in this sense is often replaced by the modern and 
more graphic "imitate"; to be told that a child 
"imitates" his father meaning that he resembles 
him in appearance. 

"We laid my pappy away yesterday, he was bed- 
fast six weeks," a young girl tells you. 

One often hears the cow or mule referred to as 
a "beastie," though the cow is also known as a 



176 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

"brute," and sometimes as a "cow-brute"; while we 
are told of a certain cat that it was "afraid of a man- 
person." Bread that does not rise is "sad," while an 
old or ill-kept horse is "sorry." "That 's good enough 
for a hireling," the woman says of the coat she gives 
the hired boy. And one frequently hears the expres- 
sion, " I 'm no hireling." When you ask a man who is 
driving a stake in the ground what he is doing, he 
may tell you that he is "jest pounding in a stob," 
and one looking for a boundary line was heard to say, 
" There ought to be a little old stob somewhere here." 
The old plural form of words ending in st yet sur- 
vives in the mountains, where the people speak of 
the "nestes" of the hens, the "postes" of the fence, 
the " waistes" of the dresses, pronouncing the words 
in two syllables. It may be said in passing that the 
word "waist" is generally replaced by "body," 
while the skirt of the dress is the "tail" — and one 
can imagine the agitated feelings of the newly ar- 
rived New England lady to whom a mountain man 
came, asking if she could not sell him a "body" for 
his wife, as she already had a "tail," and wanted to 
go to church. But this is a diversion, and returning 
to the more serious subject of antiquated speech one 
finds that "done" expressing past action, as a sup- 
plement to the auxiliary "have," is universally used. 
"He's done gone," "he's done hooked up the horse 
[to the wagon]," " he 's done filled the water-bucket," 
"she's done baked the bread"; one hears it all the 
time, and upon occasion one is informed, of a com- 
pleted action, that "he's done done it." 



THE SPEECH OF THE MOUNTAINS 177 

One could go on indefinitely gathering together 
old words and phrases that bind us to the past. But 
there are other peculiarities of speech equally inter- 
esting which have been acquired and crystallized in 
the speech of the people during their sojourn in the 
New World, and one is delighted to meet a well- 
known proverb in the following guise, — "You kin 
carry a mule to the branch, but you can't make him 
drink." "Branch" means any stream of water 
smaller than a river, and when a stream or a road 
forks, the two divisions are "prongs." To be advised 
to take the right-hand prong of a road is amusing 
at first, but when you think of it, it is at least con- 
sistent. 

The mountaineer's rules of grammar are few but 
rigid. Whatever ends in 5 is plural, hence one finds 
such words as "molasses" preceded by a plural 
particle, but when the singular is used, as it some- 
times is, the grammatical plural termination is dis- 
carded and the word consistently and deliciously be- 
comes "molass." In course of time one gets used to 
" them molasses" and the assertion that " they make 
a good many molasses " ; as one also does to the word 
"several" applied to quantity. To be told that a 
man has raised, or, as he says, made, "several pota- 
toes," soon goes without notice, though it always 
comes with a pleasant kind of shock to be informed 
that he has "made several molasses." The moun- 
taineer, it may be said in passing, sells his molasses 
by the bushel. Since a noun ending in the sound of s 
is naturally regarded as plural, we have "fuse," to 



178 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the people a new word introduced with blasting, 
supplied withthe convenient singular " f u. " * * Oxen ' ' 
is singular, and the plural of course is "oxes." The 
men still wear "galluses" — as they did in New 
England a generation ago. 

The efforts of the people to comprehend the sub- 
tleties of grammar is well illustrated by one of them 
who, anxious to speak correctly, asked whether, 
when a piece of work was all finished, it was better 
to say it was "done done" or "plumb done"; and 
another, in an effort to be exact, explained, of some- 
thing that you thought ought to be, "Oh, it's ben a 
bein' a long time." 

The usual illiterate transformations have taken 
place in the use of verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. 
"Reckon you'll have wood enough to do you until 
to-morrow?" the boy inquires. "John, did you give 
me out?" a woman asks her husband whom she has 
kept waiting. People here do not "carry," they 
"tote"; and they "reckon" instead of "think," 
though when they think hard, they "study." In- 
stead of saying you must do a thing, you say you 
are "obliged" to do it. "I'm obliged to go home 
and get the dinner," the woman with whom you 
have been talking says apologetically as she leaves 
you. That the "moon fulls to-night" is an interest- 
ing fact, for soon, that is, on the "dark of the moon," 
you can plant your corn. 

"Gwine" in some places takes the place of "go," 
and you freely hear such expressions as "gwine to 
gwine," "done gwine," and even "done done 



THE SPEECH OF THE MOUNTAINS 179 

gwine," although this is not common in the higher 
mountains. "Mighty," "powerful," and "plumb" 
universally take the place of "very." When you find 
the road all but impassable, you may be informed 
that the recent rains "undermined it mightily." 
" I can't hear mighty good," one woman says, while 
another, whose little chickens you are admiring, 
informs you that the hawks catch them "power- 
fully." Again you are told that "you-all will have a 
powerful hunt to find any blackberries now," while 
one neighbor says of another that he is "a reg'lar 
wash-foot Babdist, the powerfulest you ever saw in 
the world." "Now the truth's the truth," says a 
woman apologetically of her worn calico dress. ' ' This 
is all I've got but what's so hot it plumb swelters 
me to death." 

Without the various forms of "mighty," "power- 
ful," and "plumb," the speech of the mountaineer 
would be "powerful" weak, and illy could be spared 
the convenient "smart" and "right smart" that so 
freely adorns his remarks. "He holp her a right 
smart," some one says, joining the discarded form of 
yesterday to the invention of to-day. "Is it far?" 
you ask. "Yes, a right smart," is the reply. The 
variety of uses to which "right smart" can be put is 
both bewildering and wonderful. 

"Trick" is also of general application. "That's a 
right smart of a trick," a mountain woman says ad- 
miringly of your opera-glass. ' ' They ' ve got a plumb 
cute little trick over yonder," a woman tells you of 
a neighbor's baby. But perhaps the best thing we 



i8o THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

ever heard about a mountain baby, or any other, was 
told us by a woman of her sister's child, — "You 
never did see a prettier big baby in your life — hit 's 
as pleasant as the flowers are made." 

"He has a very glib team," we are told of one 
whose horses have made a hard journey in a short 
time. And of a neighbor suddenly fallen ill one is 
informed as the cause that "he has taken on too 
many apples." "It's not doin' much good noway," 
a disappointed farmer says of his corn crop, or again 
you will be informed that the land is so good that 
two or three acres of it will "eat a family," which 
does not mean what it says. 

There are no "stones" in the mountains, — only 
' * rocks. ' ' The boys ' ' rock ' ' each other when they get 
angry, they "rock" the cows, and we found a little 
girl "rocking" a hen that persisted in sitting on 
some round "rocks." "Air ye lookin' fer rocks, 
stranger?" is a common question in the regions of 
valuable minerals. Neither are there "hives" in the 
mountains, only "bee-gums," which the bees fill 
with "right smart of honey." 

Perhaps the most immediately noticeable pecu- 
liarity of speech is the universal use of "you-all" in 
the singular. "How are you-all to-day?" by no 
means applies to the health of the family. " We-all " 
and "they-all" are good form, though not so often 
heard. One imagines the genesis of "you-all" to 
have been in those early days when people lived so 
far apart that meeting with one member of the 
family necessitated inquiring concerning the health 



THE SPEECH OF THE MOUNTAINS i8i 

and welfare of all, and when an invitation for the 
same reason necessarily included every member of 
the family. 

" Howdy" is the usual form of salutation, and the 
people have the friendly habit, in common with the 
rustic communities of all civilized countries, of cour- 
teously greeting the stranger they may meet. You 
must make your bow and say your "howdy" to 
every man, woman, and child you pass, a custom 
that links people together and removes the instinct- 
ive fear the city-bred traveler has of meeting a 
stranger on a lonely road. Even in the larger villages 
the stranger receives a polite bow from any native 
citizen whose eye he meets. 

The voices of the people are low and pleasant, 
expressing the kindly nature of the speakers, and 
also one imagines the friendly quality of the land- 
scape and the climate. And their speech, although 
quaint and archaic, is not coarse or rude: one 
never hears offensive talk or low epithets, slang is 
unknown, and profanity in most parts of the North 
Carolina mountains is looked upon as a grave 
offense. 



XVIII 
'light and come in 

THE best way to see the people as well as the 
mountains is to walk. This one can do because 
"a mountaineer never meets a stranger," as a na- 
tive philosopher explained, adding, "The people 
round here give the kind hand to everybody, they 
have n't learned better, they have never traveled"; 
but one desiring to explore the mountains without 
either walking or riding can gain much by driving 
in a leisurely manner over such roads as are passable. 
One winds slowly along, it may be on a perfect 
summer day, the radiant Southern sky seen between 
overhanging branches, with now and then an open- 
ing in the forest through which the mountains show 
intensely blue, or like pale wraiths in the distance. 
Along the way cold springs come gushing out like 
joyous living things from under the roots of a tree or 
under a fern-draped bank — the waters purified by 
how many miles of groping through intricate dark 
passages in the heart of the mountains, springs not 
always visible from the road, but whose presence 
the knowing eye detects by the hard-beaten path 
winding down from the roadside. Crossing the cool, 
swift streams your horse stops knee-deep to drink, 
or to make believe drink, in order to stand there 
awhile. 



'LIGHT AND COME IN 183 

The road winds along, now hidden among trees, 
now emerging to ascend some open height where 
mountains come to view, near, green, and dark- 
shadowed, or distant, azure, and dreamlike ; again it 
makes its way around the end of a damp ravine 
where a stream jumps down in bright cascades, and 
the banks are smothered under ferns, leucothoe, 
and laurel. Through the vistas that open, pleasant 
pictures come and go — a farmhouse in a hollow, a 
log cabin surrounded by cornfields ripening into 
gold, the invincible, sunny forest pressing down upon 
it on all sides. And then, turning a curve in the road, 
directly before you stands an old house shaded by 
ancient oaks, a spinning-wheel on the porch, — or, 
if you happen to be in the right valley, a hand-loom 
may be there. 

This house that you approach, wherever it may 
be, seems to be expecting you, at least you have a 
friendly sense of knowing it, although you have 
never seen it before. As you draw near in the sweet 
summer stillness a friendly dog comes wagging to 
meet you, and some one, man or woman, comes out 
and hails you, "Howdy, 'light and come in." This 
is the universal salutation. Or if you are walking, 
as you come within earshot you are greeted with a 
pleasant and expectant, "Howdy, stranger, come in 
and rest yourself." Often, the moment you come 
in sight a chair is set ready on the porch, and the 
family assemble and seat themselves in expectation 
of your arrival. They greet you with a warmth that 
makes you feel as though you had known them 



i84 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

always, and they Insist upon your spending the day 
with them. Truth to tell, one enjoys a sense of 
very genuine welcome where the eyes of the hostess 
look into those of the unexpected guest, undimmed 
by a thought of what she is to have for dinner. It is 
no doubt the extreme simplicity of the food, and the 
fact that everybody, rich and poor alike, have the 
same, that give the people their gracious gift of hos- 
pitality and their feeling of equality. The knowledge 
that everybody serves the same dinner in the same 
way must go far towards leveling social distinctions. 

As you go about the mountains, you will come to 
many an old-time log house, the pictorial survivor 
of an age when the log house was the only house 
built. Those of better class, made of hewn logs and 
built by the "quality" of former generations, are 
large and substantial with a stone chimney at either 
end, from the depths of whose vast fireplaces one 
can still in imagination smell the banquets prepared 
in the "ovens" that stood in the ashes, and In the 
pots that hung suspended from the wrought-Iron 
cranes. 

Oftener than the large log house, you come upon 
the smaller one of only two or three rooms, or the 
cabin of but a single room, yet each and every one 
has its big stone chimney, and most of them have 
the porch wreathed in vines, while one yet sees roofs 
covered with hand-made shingles. The outside 
chimney standing against one end of the house gives 
the finishing touch to the appearance of the log cabin, 
but its picturesqueness is its chief virtue. The flames 



'LIGHT AND COME IN 185 

that go roaring up it in such splendid spendthrift 
fashion may warm the imagination, but they produce 
comparatively little effect upon the temperature of 
the room, and in these undegenerate days the open 
fireplace is often flanked by a modern cooking-stove 
that, however useful, is not at all ornamental. 

The interior of a cabin, needless to say, is as simple 
and oftentimes as picturesque as the outside. The 
great fireplace with its generous flames is the centre 
of attraction, and one may believe has something to 
do with the genial nature of the people reared about 
it. A large open fire expands the heart of man. The 
iron crane from which swing the pots, the circular 
"ovens" standing in the ashes, the red heart of the 
fire, the human forms played over by the flickering 
light, awaken strange emotions of a shadowy mem- 
ory from out some past existence. Next in import- 
ance to the fireplace are the beds, several of which 
often stand in one room, and even in the larger 
houses it is customary to find at least one bed in the 
parlor. 

Oftentimes a bench along the wall supplies seats 
at one side of the narrow table, and sometimes there 
is a bench on both sides, chairs being few, straight- 
backed, and narrow, for the furniture is generally 
home-made. Somewhere in a remote cove you will 
come across the man who makes the chairs, but who 
is always too busy doing something else to fill an 
order In less than a year. But what does that matter? 
In course of time and somehow the people get their 
chairs, strong, honest things made with special refer- 



i86 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

ence to bearing a man's weight when tilted against 
the wall on their back legs — this being the moun- 
taineer's favorite attitude of repose. The seats, 
made of plaited oak splints or strips of deer-hide, 
last almost as long as the hardy frames. 

In another cove you will find the man or woman 
who weaves the picturesque melon-shaped "hip" 
baskets by means of which the people "tote" their 
possessions from place to place, either walking or 
riding horseback, the horse quite as often as not 
being a lop-eared mule. These weavers are often- 
times quite skillful in their art, being able, so they 
claim, to weave any kind of basket you can show 
them. 

Brooms are made by anybody and everybody. 
The tall picturesque broom-corn that ornaments 
the landscape, however, is raised to sell, the univer- 
sal sweeping instrument of the mountains being 
made from the "broom-straw," or wild sedge that 
so beautifully takes possession of every "old field" 
not yet grown up to bushes. All you need to do is to 
gather a bundle of the ripe sedge and " wrop," that is, 
bind, it about the end of a stick with a piece of wire 
if you have it, otherwise with a piece of string. But 
for brushing the hearth it is better to have your 
broom made from a bundle of tree twigs similarly 
"wropped" around the end of a stick. 

There is a fascination about a life where the people 
themselves make what they need. It returns us in 
imagination to an age of peace and plenty for every- 
body, to an era of happiness free from hurry, worry, 



'LIGHT AND COME IN 187 

and sordid ideals, and if the reality falls short of the 
poet's fancy, there yet clings a touch of romance 
about the home-made chairs, baskets, and pottery of 
the Southern mountains. When can one forget the 
long, sweet days of wandering about the country in 
search of the "jug-makers"! — "jugs" being the 
generic title of every form of home-made pottery. 
It was while in Traumfest that one was fired with 
ambition to discover the makers of the rude but pic- 
turesque jugs in such general use there. The people 
tell you they are made in Jugtown, down in South 
Carolina, but when you go out to find Jugtown, there 
is no such place. At Gowansville, below the moun- 
tains and some ten miles from Traumfest, one makes 
a serious effort to find — not Jugtown, that quest 
has long since been abandoned, but the nearest jug- 
maker. The people do not seem to know, but finally 
a black girl whom we stop on the road tells us that 
Rich Williams, "A cullud man who lives three quar- 
ters away, yon side the Tiger River," makes them. 

On we go, and in the end find Rich — this side the 
Tiger. Yes, he makes jugs, and he is at it. You get 
out of him that a great many people in that region 
make jugs, and you conclude that "Jugtown" is a 
jocular expression for the whole region of pottery 
clay, but having found Rich Williams, you bear no 
resentment. 

He is an old-time negro, as black as ebony, evi- 
dently very proud of your visit, and you are soon 
watching the bony, black hands knead the clay and 
pat it into a loaf, then on the wheel coax it into 



i88 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

shape. The veins stand out like cords on Rich's 
sinewy arms, his long hands draw the flat clay loaf 
up, up, into the stately two-gallon jug with its nar- 
row mouth, or into the wide-mouthed butter crock, 
or the pug-nosed pitcher, big or little. Rich loves 
his work. He says he can make anything he wants 
to out of clay. Looking at him, you seem to see 
before you the original potter. His wheel, which 
looks as though he had made it himself, is in a little 
log hut, lighted by one tiny window. His outfit 
consists of the wheel, a tall stool, his clay, and a 
stick or two. He digs the clay from the bank of the 
Tiger River that runs near, — slate-colored, adhe- 
sive clay that Rich says is "powerful good" for jug- 
making. He grinds it in a wooden box by the help of 
a slow-footed mule that walks in a circle at the end 
of a long curved beam which turns an upright shaft 
fitted with wooden teeth at its lower end. Rich has a 
jug of water at his elbow, one of his own make, and 
there he sits all day, and every day, busy with his 
clay. 

You watch tall jugs rise as by magic under his 
hands, and when they are done he lifts them off the 
wheel, and on every jug are slight indentations caused 
by the pressure of his hands as he lifts them. There 
are queer hollows in them, sometimes, and lopsided- 
nesses, for Rich is not always in the best mood, and, 
while on some days jugs fly easily from under his 
hands, there are other days when they are contrary. 
Rich tells you that his glaze is made from ashes and 
clay, that he washes the jugs inside and outside with 



'LIGHT AND COME IN 189 

it, and then sets them in the oven. His oven, out of 
doors near the shed in which he works, is a long, 
low vault of bricks and clay, with a fire-hole at one 
end and an opening at the other. He sets in his jugs, 
makes up a wood fire, and bakes them until they are 
done. 

It seems as though one could learn to tell, from 
looking at a jug, what manner of man made it — 
and whether he was black or white. Black men's 
jugs are like them, some way, careless, generous, 
picturesque. Rich's jugs are homely, but one likes 
them, they are so honest. A jug made by a potter 
who dug the clay out of the bank with his own hands, 
and soaked it, and ground it, and shaped it, and 
glazed it, and baked it, must be a wholesome sort of 
jug to have in any house. We had formed the habit 
of setting groups of Rich's jugs in the fireplace, 
partly to heat the water, and partly for the pictur- 
esque effect, long before we knew of the ebony hands 
that moulded them out of the gray clay of the Tiger 
River. 

The place of the jug would seem to be firmly 
established in the mountains. Yet in these later days 
its existence is threatened. The tin lard pail has risen 
above the horizon. Everybody buys lard, and the 
"buckets" become family treasures. Even into the 
remotest regions the insidious foe has crept, until 
one finds the unlovely lard pail occupying the place 
where, a few years ago, only the decorative brown 
earthenware jug would have stood. 



XIX 

PENELOPE AND NAUSICAA 

THE mountain woman has her duties and her 
privileges. She loves, honors, and obeys, in- 
nocent of any knowledge of the suffrage movement. 
She can work out of doors, wearing a long skirt. She 
does much of the work elsewhere relegated to man, 
but is always deferential to her husband, whom she 
respectfully refers to as "him," as though that were 
his baptismal name. 

In the mountain cabin "housework" has no ter- 
rors, an hour a day is enough for everything. " Bric- 
^-brac" has not been discovered, and there are no 
"things" to accumulate. Yet the people are not 
without ideas of decoration, in some places stray 
newspapers being eagerly seized upon, not for the 
valuable information they contain, — the people 
manage to get on very happily without that, — but 
for the purpose of papering the walls. Particularly 
upon the side occupied by the chimney these pub- 
lications are put to a use believed by many to be 
ornamental. In some parts of this land of leisure, to 
have one's walls papered by "illustrated editions" 
is as much a mark of distinction as in another part 
of the world It Is to have them hung with master- 
pieces of painting. Besides, they keep the room 
warm, so the people say. At times this might be 



PENELOPE AND NAUSICAA 191 

figuratively, if not literally, true! As soon, however, 
as harv^est- time comes, the atrocious effect is softened 
by the multiple strings of beans, of sliced pumpkin, 
and sliced apples that festoon the walls about the 
fireplace and shrivel decoratively in front of it, mer- 
cifully concealing and staining and otherwise har- 
monizing the luridities of the daily press. Papering 
the walls in this way is an exasperating boon to the 
storm-bound stranger who, unaccustomed to long 
reverie in a public place, turns for pastime to the 
papered wall. You follow a thrilling narrative 
through several columns, interested in spite of your- 
self, then at the most exciting point it stops short. 
You have reached the end of a page that cannot be 
turned. 

You will often see the mountain woman in her 
big sunbonnet in the fields hoeing, or helping "lay 
by the craps," occupations which, if not pursued too 
arduously, and they seldom are, do her no harm. On 
the contrary, such work is good for her, although it 
so often excites the indignation of strangers, to whom 
the sight of a woman working in a field always 
seems to bring visions of terrible oppression and 
cruelty. Most of the mountain women would prefer 
their light field work to the far more arduous duties 
of their well-dressed critics. The woman milks the 
cow, — she does not like to trust so important and 
delicate a task to a mere man, — and she sits in the 
doorway or near the fire and churns the butter in a 
tall, slender earthenware or wooden churn. And 
when she is done, she has plenty of time to rest. 



192 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

When berries are ripe, she and the children have 
an ever-ready occupation. Particularly in huckle- 
berry season you will see little "gangs" of sunbon- 
neted women and children, with stained and happy 
faces, and stained hands and clothes, plodding along 
the dusty road carrying heavy pails of shining blue- 
black berries. And sometimes whole families go to 
the "huckleberry balds" on the mountains, where 
they stay several days, sleeping in their tented 
wagons. It is only in recent years that the people 
have taken to canning their berries, sugar being a 
luxury in the mountains. But lately there has come 
a substitute for sugar which is vaguely referred to as 
"powders," and what these mysterious powders are 
we discovered one day when into a country store in 
the mountains, where we had gone in search of some- 
thing to eat, came a little troop of women each with 
her tin pail full of berries and each demanding 
"powders" according to her needs. The clerk cast a 
critical eye over each pail of berries, then ladled out 
from a bottle a quantity of white powder sufficient 
in his estimation to cover the case. When the women 
had gone we asked him what the powder was. He 
said he did n't know, and rather reluctantly handed 
us the bottle, on which was the label printed in black 
letters — Salicylic Acid. It does not take much of 
this to preserve a jar of berries, though one should 
think that as a substitute for sugar it might be a 
little disappointing. However, any berries are better 
than none when winter comes, and there is no other 
fruit, excepting apples and peaches, which are dried 



PENELOPE AND NAUSICAA 193 

in strings before the fire or simply spread out on one 
end of tlie porch floor, and the appearance of which 
makes one's mind turn with lessened repugnance to 
the thought of berries preserved in powders. 

But the most cherished occupation of the moun- 
tain woman for generations was, and to a very lim- 
ited extent still is, weaving, an occupation exclu- 
sively her own and which in a peculiar way relates 
her to a by-gone world. Traveling along the road, 
you glance through an open doorway to see a woman 
"sitting in a loom," a large, clumsy, home-made 
loom in which she is weaving cloth. One always 
experiences a thrill of pleasure at sight of a loom here 
in the mountains. Some memory of Penelope and 
Evangeline seems to linger about it. But the weavers 
of to-day are neither great ladies nor fair young girls. 
The girls of the mountains prefer machine-made 
cloth to the home product and the labor of weaving 
it. "I can't learn her noway," the mother says of 
her daughter who takes no interest in the ancestral 
loom. 

In the corner near the loom stands the spinning- 
wheel, not as a mere parlor ornament with a ribbon 
around its neck, but in readiness to spin a thread. 
Sometimes loom and spinning-wheel stand upon the 
porch, where they lend a peculiar air of domesticity 
to the landscape. As a rule, however, they are inside 
the house, for weaving is the woman's winter work, 
crone might say her recreation, for like the woman of 
antiquity she loves to spin and weave. And she is 
proud of the result. Even the coarse "jeans " for her 



194 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

men's clothing and the "linsey cloth" for her own 
are regarded by her with affectionate pride, for has 
she not created them out of nothing, you might 
say? To convert a long thread into a piece of stout 
cloth might well make any heart thrill with pride. 
Besides this, she weaves towels and blankets and, 
most prized of all, coverlets of elaborate design for 
the beds. 

"We used to have great gangs of sheep," the 
people say, " but now we have to buy all our wool, 
and it don't pay to weave noway." " I 'd rather card 
and spin and weave than anything in my life," the 
older women who did this work in their youth tell 
you. It was the stock laws that drove away the 
sheep, for they had to be inclosed and this made 
raising them unprofitable — so the people explain, 
but one suspects it is really the cheap machine-made 
cloth, to be had at every country store, that has 
conquered the loom. 

There are not many looms within easy reach of 
the larger places, prosperity and contact with the 
outside world, be it ever so slight, soon retiring the 
loom. Yet there are a few looms even there, and in 
the remoter regions, far from railways and summer 
visitors, they are still in common use. With what 
pleasure one recalls certain high valleys where under 
the shadow of blue domes and green slopes one finds 
in every second house a great loom taking up half 
the room ! And those quaint log cabins whose beds 
are spread with blue and white coverlets such as are 
cherished in old New England farmhouses! 




PENELOPE 



PENELOPE AND NAUSICAA 195 

One penetrating into a certain "cove" of the 
mountains finds Mrs. Hint Tomson, still a "power- 
ful weaver." Near her lives old Mrs. Robbins, who 
used to do "a heap of mighty good weaving work," 
too, but she is now blind in one eye, though she can 
still "design" sunlight with it, and she is ninety 
years old, so she says, and "plumb broke down." If 
she is right about her age, one can well believe the 
rest of the statement. There are other weavers liv- 
ing in the same neighborhood, some of whom yet 
"weave a power," and all of them will bring out from 
chests or shelves and display with pride the old 
coverlets made by dead and gone grandmothers or 
great-grandmothers, as well as by less industrious 
present-day weavers. 

With what pride they display their favorite pat- 
terns ! They know nothing about the latest novel or 
the opera or scandal in high life, perhaps they could 
not even tell you who is President of the United 
States at the present moment, but they are ready to 
give their opinion upon the relative merits of the 
"rattlesnake trail," "the wheels of time," "the 
rising and setting sun," "Bonaparte's March," "the 
snail's trail," and other old and prized designs. 

And as they show their treasures and talk, they 
tell you many a homely secret connected with the 
art of weaving. 

" If you want to make a man jeans that he can't 
hardly wear out," one woman confides to your sym- 
pathetic ear, although you have no great expectation 
of needing the advice, "you dye the chain light tan 



196 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

with black walnut, then take the first shearing of 
lambs and weave it in white, then dye the cloth with 
walnut. The lamb's wool fulls up, it shrinks more 
than any other and makes a cloth he can't hardly 
wear out. You've got him harnessed up then to 
stay." 

The ' ' chain " or " harness, ' ' that is to say, the warp 
of these coverlets is made of cotton thread, usually 
white, and the "filling" of woolen yarn, generally 
blue, though it is sometimes red or green, or pink or 
black. Mrs. Levi Ward's "wheels of time" are 
black and white. 

Besides the coverlets themselves, Penelope takes 
pride in showing her "drafts," the patterns from 
which the designs are made, and which have been 
handed down from generation to generation dating 
back to those days when the women vied with one 
another in inventing original designs, designs which 
were handed down with the loom — a true "heir- 
loom" as one perceives. To this day each pattern 
keeps its name, and that of one, the "Missouri 
trouble," brings one suddenly close to a page of his- 
tory, when the women were patiently weaving 
through the formative periods of a nation, tingling 
with the charged condition of the atmosphere, and 
through their looms giving expression to the emotions 
thus powerfully aroused. Those days are gone now. 
Lethargy has stolen over the souls of the people and 
no new designs are being made, only some of the old 
ones are copied, and that with lessening frequency. 
The coverlets made to-day are not so beautiful as 



PENELOPE AND NAUSICAA 197 

those made before the use of chemical dyes. Then 
the people raised their own indigo and went out into 
the woods for walnut bark and certain herbs whose 
dyes defied both time and the washtub, only getting 
a little mellower as they grew older. Some of the 
prettiest of these old coverlets have a dark green 
pattern woven into a black warp, and one occa- 
sionally sees an old-rose counterpane, which is pret- 
tiest of all. 

Even in the remoter districts it is only the older 
women who weave, and in another generation hand- 
weaving will have become a lost art, so far as the 
people at large are concerned. Schools to encourage 
weaving have been established here and there in the 
mountains, it is true, but philanthropic efforts of that 
kind cannot save a people from the onward march 
of progress. The work done in these schools is not 
sold to the people themselves, — they cannot afford 
to buy it, — but to summer visitors or it is sent to 
distant cities as a luxury to the rich. It serves a good 
purpose in providing remunerative work to a small 
number of the mountain women, but as to reviving 
to any extent the good old customs among the people 
themselves, — the hand cannot be put back on the 
dial. Besides the immediate help they afford, these 
schools have doubtless another mission: by gather- 
ing up and recording the old patterns, and with them 
more or less of the old customs of the people, they are 
preserving valuable material for future historians 
and story-tellers. 

In addition to the art of weaving, the mountain 



198 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

women have another picturesque occupation which is 
in no immediate danger of passing, and which, were 
it not for Homer, one might hesitate to enlarge upon. 
But after the glamour cast over Nausicaa beating 
out the family wash in the crystal waters of the 
Phseacian River, one ventures to present a woman 
of the Southern mountains standing under a laurel 
tree, her well-used wooden tubs ranged on a bench 
before her. On the ground at her side bright flames 
leap up about the large black pot, hung to a pole above 
or standing in the ashes. A cloud of white steam 
from the pot, a little curl of faint blue smoke from 
the fire, the deep-blue sky showing through the 
leaves of the forest, the murmur of running water 
from the stream close at hand — these are the rest 
of the apology, if any is needed, for presenting the 
subject in detail. 

Whereas Nausicaa trod out the stains from her 
clothes with snow-white feet, the woman of the 
mountains lifts her clothes from the boiling pot on 
the end of a long stick, lays them on a stump leveled 
for the purpose, and soundly beats them with a 
paddle. There are no shining sands on which to 
spread them, so she spreads them on the shining 
bushes, and when they are dry loads them, not into 
a chariot drawn by firm-hoofed mules, but into a 
basket made of oak splints which she sometimes 
carries home on her head. 

The washing-place down by the branch is always 
picturesque, and so Is the woman at her labors sur- 
rounded by the beauty of nature that, as it were, 




OVER THE TUBS 



PENELOPE AND NAUSICAA 199 

embraces her. Even more picturesque than the 
white woman at her task is perhaps the black woman 
whom one often sees in the lower mountains stand- 
ing under a great laurel bush or a^shady tree, dipp- 
ing the clothes from her steaming black pot, then 
valiantly paddling them on a tree stump. There is 
something so leisurely and yet so hearty about these 
black people — and they satisfy your love for the 
picturesque without exciting any feeling of pity. 
When you look into their great shining eyes you 
know that when all is said they love to wash. And 
they have never any feeling of shame about it. 
Though for that matter neither have the mountain 
women of the white race when you get far enough 
from the villages, where the ferment of civilization 
has crept in, the ferment whose first action is always 
to make people ashamed to be seen working. 

In accordance with the customs of the country, the 
women do their washing as they do everything else, 
in the manner most convenient for the moment. 
They have no roof to shelter them in winter, but the 
year round wash "down at the branch" in the open 
air. Often the tub stands on the ground, the woman 
leaning over it in a way to make one's back ache in 
sympathy. But as usual your sympathy is wasted. 

"Why does n't your husband make you a bench? " 
you cry in indignation, and she, rising up smiling 
from the suds, replies — "I like it better this way, 
a body don't have to lift up the water, nor lift down 
the tub to empty it." 

Washboards of course are as unknown as darning- 



200 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

needles. Why waste money on a washboard when all 
your ancestors paddled their clothes on the end of 
a stump? But sometimes the woman has no tub, 
and that really is serious. Once, over towards the 
lovely Nantahala Mountains, we came upon a 
woman washing in a wooden box. She was young 
and a baby sat on the ground at her side. The blue 
mountains were a heavenly vision behind her, a 
clump of brilliant wild flowers rose above her head. 
But her eyelids were swollen, she had evidently been 
weeping, and the tiny cabin higher up the hill was 
very bare inside. Was there a "still" down in the 
ravine? Had her young husband been carried away 
by the " revenuers " ? Or had he fallen a victim to the 
seductions of his own industry? Our hearts were 
troubled, but we could do nothing. She turned her 
head aside and would not look at us; so, respecting 
her sorrow, we passed in silence, flooding her with 
warm good will and heartfelt hopes that life would 
soon grow brighter. 



XX 

A VANISHING ROMANCE 

TO the outside world the most interesting char- 
acter in the mountains is the moonshiner, 
who appears to the imagination as the Robin Hood 
of the Southern greenwood, sallying forth from his 
illicit "still," hidden in some cavern in the moun- 
tains, to pursue the relentless vendetta and contrib- 
ute "spirits" to a grateful community. 

Who is this romantic figure? When and how did 
he come upon the scene? Unfortunately for romance, 
he is not a survival of some ancient age and custom, 
but on the contrary, a product of conditions result- 
ing from the Civil War. ' * Before the war ' ' the moun- 
taineer converted his grain into whiskey just as the 
New Englander converted his apples into cider. 
The act of distilling in itself was not a crime, and 
became so only because it was an evasion of the reve- 
nue laws. In these late years the wave of prohibi- 
tion passing over the South has further complicated 
the act and made it reprehensible in the eyes of most 
people. But we have only to contemplate the im- 
mense quantity of distilling in Kentucky, Illinois, 
and other great places of production to see that it is 
not a question of morals but simply of money. In 
the mountains, where it is stigmatized not as illegal 



202 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

but as " illicit," a nice distinction, it is not a question 
of morals but of rights. 

Formerly, when no odium was attached to it, the 
distillation of whiskey was universal and respect- 
able, according to the customs of the time, and, in 
spite of the supply of whiskey kept in every house, 
the people were not intemperate. Even to-day, the 
word "whiskey" has no such sinister meaning in the 
mountains as it has acquired in the outer world, 
where its use has been so long abused in the cities, 
although its distillation, because of its secrecy, its 
hidden ways, its "illicit" character, has made it the 
most destructive to character of any one pursuit. 

At the beginning of the Civil War for the sake of 
revenue a very heavy tax was placed upon all dis- 
tilled alcoholic liquors. After the war was over, the 
tax was not removed, and this is the grievance of 
the mountaineer, who says the tax should have been 
removed, that it is unjust and oppressive, and he 
has a right to do as he pleases with his own corn, 
and to evade a law that interferes with his personal 
freedom. We read in the stories of English life much 
about the rigkt of smuggling, the practice of smug- 
gling being not only right but heroic, and it was 
doubtless in accordance with this sentiment, which 
may have been strengthened by his desire to taste 
the forbidden fruit, that the mountaineer continued 
as of old to make his own whiskey, omitting the 
costly formula of obtaining a government license and 
thereafter subjecting himself to government super- 
vision. At first, because of his remoteness, he was 



A VANISHING ROMANCE 203 

not much hampered by the enforcement of the, to 
him, obnoxious law. As the country became more 
thickly settled, the struggle for existence harder, and 
the officers of the law more vigilant, whiskey-mak- 
ing became a special rather than a general occupa- 
tion, and was carried on by the boldest and most 
executive spirits of the region, who called their illicit 
product "blockade," thus attaching to themselves 
something of the respectability and even the hero- 
ism of a man running a blockade against an enemy 
in a just cause. Hence some of the most valuable 
men in the mountains have been moonshiners, as 
well, of course, as some of the least valuable. To-day 
the moonshiner is losing caste even among his own 
people,, and the younger generation of mountaineers 
finds its way out into the world when in need of 
employment for its energies. 

The people tell us that, in days gone by, the whis- 
key made in the mountains was pure, but since the 
more complete enforcement of the revenue laws, and 
the yet more limiting consequences of recently en- 
acted prohibition laws, the path of, the moonshiner 
has been so beset that he has resorted to various 
ways of increasing the value of his product, adding 
tobacco and other deleterious drugs to give it 
"bead" and make "seconds" look like proof whis- 
key. In short, he now makes "mean whiskey" that 
sometimes causes a curious form of madness in the 
drinker. 

The old time mountaineer, so far as moonshining 
was concerned, had often to choose between two 



204 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

evils. His possession consisted perhaps of a large 
family and a small cornfield, the latter often on a 
mountain slope so steep that its staying there seemed 
little short of miraculous. His corn being his wealth, 
it had to buy the clothes of the family if they had 
any. He could with great labor "tote" it down the 
mountain many miles to the nearest market, get 
next to nothing for it, go home to his needy family, an 
"honest man" in the eyes of the law, but despised 
by his neighbors as being "no account" in the war- 
fare of life. Or he could betake himself to some lonely 
gorge not far from home, "still up" his grain, easily 
transport the product and yet more easily dispose of 
it. There is always a market for corn in this form, 
and the price it brings is several hundred fold that 
of the raw material, and the man who "stilled," 
though a reprobate in the eye of the law, until very 
recently was not so in the estimation of his neigh- 
bors. His family was fed and clothed, he waxed rich, 
and the stranger who came to the mountains admired 
his picturesque home and praised him for his indus- 
try, unaware of the true nature of his labors. It 
must have been a nice matter for any judge, taking 
into consideration all the circumstances, to decide 
whether the moonshiner of yesterday, when no 
avenues to livelihood were open, was a "good" man 
or a "bad" one. The unsuccessful moonshiner, of 
course, was bad. 

Within the past few years the moonshiner, along 
with many time-honored customs, has been rapidly 
vanishing. But before that one often met him in the 



A VANISHING ROMANCE 205 

woods, patrolling some lonely path, gun on shoulder. 
If you asked him what he was doing he looked at 
you with kind and guileless eyes and told you he 
was "lookin' for squirrels," and as soon as you had 
passed he discharged his rifle, not into your quiver- 
ing body, but into the air to inform his confederates 
that somebody was coming. He wore no mark of 
Cain upon his brow, often he was a handsome fellow, 
clever and fearless. You might know him for months, 
even buy eggs or mustard greens of him or his off- 
spring, without suspecting the truth. 

The moonshiner required gifts of a high order to 
succeed in his precarious calling. If caught distilling, 
there was a heavy fine and a term in prison, and 
whoever pleased could get ready money for betray- 
ing his hiding-place, a severe strain on the loyalty of 
impecunious or unfriendly neighbors. He owned a 
piece of land and raised corn on it, but not corn 
enough. He was always buying meal or carrying 
com to the mill to be ground. Sometimes he took 
a little to several mills, but that deceived no one. 
Everybody knew he got a bag of meal at Scrugg's 
mill on Monday, another at the Pumpkin Patch mill 
on Tuesday, and a third at the Bear Wallow on 
Thursday, and everybody knew what he did with it, 
though if you asked him you would be gravely in- 
formed that he " fed hawgs." 

He was honest, always leaving full measure in the 
bottle he found behind a stump. The method of ex- 
change was simple: You put your bottle in company 
with money behind a stump in the woods; then you 



206 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

told the first mountain man you met what you had 
done. Even though he might have no interest in 
the business, by some system of communication the 
news was conveyed to the right place, and when you 
went next day you found your bottle full. Of course 
you kept away from the bottle's hiding-place mean- 
time. The system did not work under observation. 

It is not impossible, even in these days, to get 
samples of exhilarating "corn juice," a colorless 
liquid with a peculiar, flower-like aroma that deceives 
the stranger. It seems, for the first second after it is 
taken into the mouth, as inoffensive as the water it 
looks like, with a delicate flavor of wild flowers. 
But wait another second, and you will think you 
have performed the juggler's feat of eating fire, but 
without knowing how. In time it might ripen, but 
it never has time. It is the only thing in the South 
that cannot wait. It is enough to strangle a croco- 
dile, and yet the trained native finds it too mild to 
suit his palate and sometimes adds the juice of the 
buckeye to give it zest. If you have ever tasted 
buckeye juice, you will understand that it is able to 
impart zest. 

When his still was discovered, the moonshiner 
sometimes argued the case quickly and to the point 
with his gun, but generally he hid away. It was only 
from the "revenuers" or "raiders" that he hid, 
however. In the case of a "spy," as he termed those 
overzealous neighbors of his who for the sake of the 
reward paid for such services informed the revenue 
officers where to find his still, he seldom spared the 



A VANISHING ROMANCE 207 

bullet, and it was as apt to come from behind as any- 
where else, such "varmint" not being considered 
worth a fair fight. The life of an informer, if he was 
discovered, was worth considerably less than the 
sum he got for informing. Sooner or later he came to 
grief. Of course the law made an effort to apprehend 
the transgressor in such cases, but the forest is vast, 
and the quest was about as hopeless as hunting for 
a very small needle in a very large haystack. The 
woods tell no tales, nor do good people very much 
regret the untimely end of the "informer," for usu- 
ally his kind is more detrimental to a community 
than is an honest outlaw. 

The moonshiner defended his still as other men do 
their hearths. When two moonshiners fell out, they 
got their deepest revenge by betraying each other's 
still. This was generally followed by the shooting of 
one by the other, when vengeance was sure to descend 
upon the slayer, the avenger in his turn being shot 
by a member of the first victim's family. Thus was 
sometimes started a blood feud that lasted for gen- 
erations, or until the death of the last male on one 
side. These deeds sound wild, but they were not of 
common occurrence, and all shooting was strictly 
confined to quarrels among themselves. A stranger 
might go into the home of a man red-handed with 
the blood of his foe and be received so cordially that 
he would never suspect his frank host of being 
"wanted " in the criminal court. Such lawless deeds, 
although they sometimes occurred, were not fre- 
quent in the North Carolina mountains, nor were 



208 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

they gilded by romance outside the story-books and 
newspapers. Those frightful blood feuds that have 
given such notoriety to certain districts in Kentucky 
and Virginia, and which were sometimes though not 
always connected with moonshining, are unknown 
here. 

That the day of the moonshiner is passing is well 
illustrated by the fact that when the road was sur- 
veyed up Tryon Mountain a few years ago, not less 
than half a dozen moonshine stills were routed on 
the little streams adorning that dignified eminence, 
while to-day there is probably not a single still on 
the mountain. Only the remains of the stills were 
found, of course, for by the time the surveyors got 
there the watchful owners had taken away the cop- 
per retorts and whatever else was valuable. 

Six little stills gone off Tryon Mountain at that 
time undoubtedly meant six little stills set up else- 
where in the mountains near, for not unless the re- 
tort was found and destroyed, and he too poor to 
buy another, did the owner of a still abandon his 
occupation. To the young and active mountaineer 
there was for long an irresistible fascination about 
moonshining. In it he found combined, as it were, 
the excitements of war with the reward of industry. 
It was his Wall Street with a spice of personal dan- 
ger thrown in. When he was caught and put in jail 
he was terribly ashamed, not of being in jail, but of 
getting caught. It was something of a shock when 
one first came to the mountains to have a woman 
tell you her husband was in jail as frankly and with 



A VANISHING ROMANCE 209 

as little consciousness of disgrace as she might tell 
you that he had gone to visit his relatives. To go to 
jail for moonshining was almost as good as being a 
martyr. When a man came out, his friends laughed 
and shook hands with him, and he went back to 
"stilling" with a grim determination not to get 
caught again. What happened to the stills on Tryon 
Mountain is fast happening everywhere; as roads 
and settlements come in, the "moonshine still" goes 
out. 

Although the moonshiner existed everywhere in 
the mountains, his most noted retreat was in the 
Dark Corners, on the eastern slope of the Blue 
Ridge. Where is this mysterious and dangerous 
region? Nobody seems to know exactly, though in a 
general way it is over towards Hogback, across the 
South Carolina state line. In course of time one dis- 
covers the name to be generic. There are " Dark 
Corners" on the maps in various states of the South, 
but they are not related to each other, nor to us 
excepting through a common reputation for lawless- 
ness. If nature had planned our Dark Corners on 
purpose for the successful distillation of iniquitous 
"corn-juice," she could not have planned better, 
made up as it is of valleys guarded by mountain 
walls, furnished with rushing streams, and with 
numerous obscure exits in different directions. Best 
of all, perhaps, it lies directly on the State line, for 
when the skein of the moonshiner's life becomes 
tangled by spies and revenuers, he needs another 
state handy to step into for rest and reflection, and 



210 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

whence he can in safety give spirituous consolation 
to his brethren. 

The principal water-course of our Dark Corners 
is Vaughn's Creek, whose source is supposed to be in 
that lovely gap between Hogback and Rocky Spur, 
into which, as seen from Traumfest, the sun drops 
and disappears at the winter solstice, and whose up- 
per waters were once believed to be bristling with 
stills. Of course no outsider was supposed to go into 
the Dark Corners, but any one might follow that 
road winding along high up on Melrose Mountain 
to a certain point, where looking down he could see 
directly into the forbidden region. With what 
breathless curiosity you peer down there the first 
time! And what do you see? Did you not know it 
to be in the Dark Corners, you might suppose it to 
be a corner in some paradise. In the distance, on a 
mound and surrounded by tall trees, stands a large, 
old-fashioned house. Below it are cultivated fields 
covering the bottom of a little valley through which 
winds a stream, one of the numerous tributaries of 
Vaughn's Creek. Almost beneath you is a cabin with 
a tall tree shading it, the green fields beyond it merg- 
ing into those others. The term "dark," it is evi- 
dent, cannot refer to nature, for sunshine floods the 
place, its woods we are sure are fragrant, and its 
streams murmur with sweet voices, and there is not 
the slightest sign of wickedness anywhere — which 
is a little disappointing. This of course is only one 
very small portion of the Dark Corners, the rest 
being hidden behind wooded ridges. And this valley, 



A VANISHING ROMANCE 211 

with its sparkling waters and high surrounding 
mountains, is so tempting in its possibilities that 
one longs for the means, including the ability of the 
landscape artist, to convert it into the dream of 
beauty it could so easily become. 

But though we may look so safely^down into one 
end of the Dark Corners, hold our breath up there on 
Melrose Mountain, and see nothing to hold it for, 
access to that charmed region is even to-day as 
difficult to the stranger as it has always been be- 
lieved to be undesirable. There is a road in, but it 
appears to have been designed to keep people out. 
By far the easiest way to get there is to walk. And 
this we did many a time in by-gone days, having 
first made friends with the principal offenders 
against the excise law. It was the people of the 
Dark Corners who muddled our hitherto clear con- 
victions about right and wrong. The young girls 
who came out of there to bring us flowers smiled as 
sweetly as any child of fortune. And one has seen 
the face of a moonshiner glow with an expression 
that assured one that, whatever the verdict of the 
world, he would not be counted bad in that final 
court where human prejudices are ruled out. 

That the Dark Corners got its name from the 
flourishing but questionable industry carried on 
there is disputed by some, who say that the name 
was given, not because of moral obliquity, but be- 
cause once a stump orator, trying to rouse the people 
at some political crisis, told them they were steeped 
in ignorance, that they lived in dark corners, and 



212 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

never came out into the light. "Dark Corners!" 
The name struck the fancy of deriding neighbors 
and stuck. However that may be, Dark Corners 
here came to be synonymous with the haunt of the 
moonshiner, whose boldest deeds were executed 
there in days gone by. Many tales are told of raids 
into the Dark Corners, of tragedies enacted there, 
and finally of the clever manner in which the "mas- 
ter moonshiner" conducted to a happy issue his 
perilous vocation, rendered ever more perilous by the 
encroachments of civilization. This kindly outlaw 
did not shoot the invaders; he invited them to din- 
ner, cared for their horses, entertained them with his 
best, no doubt including an accidental bottle, then 
followed them to his still, looked on while they de- 
stroyed his expensive outfit, assisted them in load- 
ing the barrels of confiscated "stuff," even politely 
lending them his own wagon and horses to convey it 
away. It was difficult to get "stuff" hauled out of 
the Dark Corners, because nobody would do it. No 
negro driver could be induced to go in there at any 
price, so it was a real kindness to be helped out by 
the moonshiner himself. 

Such conduct as this could not fail of its reward. 
The "raider," so it is said, did his duty to the extent 
of satisfying the demands of his office, and if he 
suspected that the stuff confiscated was but a part, 
and a small part, of what remained " hid out" in the 
ravines, he did not overwork his conscience nor risk 
his popularity trying to find it. Neither did he ac- 
cuse the man, who had treated him so handsomely, 



A VANISHING ROMANCE 213 

of owning the still found so near his house. This was 
a coincidence which did not concern him. Neither 
did he come too often nor too secretly. It was whis- 
pered that it was not to the interest of the revenuer 
to destroy so good an excuse for his own office. 

Of course a good deal depended upon the quality of 
the " revenuer " assigned to a district, but even that 
could be arranged, it not being unheard of for the 
brother or other near relative of a notorious moon- 
shiner to be elected to that discreet office. There are 
a good many ways to evade an unpopular law in a 
country where the majority is "agin the govern- 
ment." Even the licensed stills have been known to 
be operated most successfully by clever moonshiners 
who knew how to satisfy the demands of the inspec- 
tor and at the same time manipulate the machinery 
in a way to make licensed distilling pay as well as 
that not licensed. 

It would be hasty to affirm that "blockade" is no 
longer made in the mountains, but it is not now made 
in the free-and-easy manner and on the compara- 
tively large scale of former years, although as a mat- 
ter of fact the amount of whiskey manufactured in 
the little mountain stills has never been worth the 
cost of trying to restrain it. 

In these days those rows of demijohn-shaped jugs 
in which Traumfest used to transport her "vinegar" 
are no more seen standing on the platform of the 
railway station. It is astonishing the amount of 
vinegar that used to go out of Traumfest, in jugs. 
It had a powerful alcoholic smell, this vinegar, but 



214 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

those who handled it turned the olfactory equiva- 
lent of a deaf ear to this peculiarity, and having re- 
ceived it as vinegar, unquestioningly passed it on 
as such. It went to other stations, where it was re- 
ceived by those in waiting, and by them distributed 
to such as needed this sort of vinegar to their salad. 
Sometimes it was "molasses" jugs that had this 
peculiar smell, which was no odor of sanctity, nor 
yet of honest sorghum. 

To visit a moonshine still was the natural desire 
of all good people, and this could easily be done after 
the confidence of the owner had been gained, for he 
then trusted you completely. It is psychologically 
an interesting experience. The forest seems full of 
eyes as you follow your guide through the lonely 
paths. You have a feeling that somebody is looking 
at you and reading the truth in your guilty heart. 
For the moment you, too, are an outlaw, and the 
mingled feelings that assail you are not wholly disa- 
greeable. One's feelings undergo a curious change, 
however, upon finding the still, not in a cave on a 
wild mountain-side, nor in some all but inaccessible 
glen, but in a little ravine near the moonshiner's 
home, where live his wife and little children, those 
beautiful little children so common in this country. 
One notices the delicate framework of both parents, 
the small hands and feet characteristic of the people 
of the South, the well-formed features, the unful- 
filled promise of a nature designed for a life of refine- 
ment. 

The man leads you to his still as naturally as he 



A VANISHING ROMANCE 215 

would take you to see his corn-mill. You are aston- 
ished to find how near the still is to the house, until 
you reflect how far away the house itself is. The 
object of your quest is perhaps so hidden in the ra- 
vine that you do not suspect its presence until you 
are standing directly over it, and then would not 
know but for a faint line of smoke coming up through 
the tree-tops. The path to it is very obscure: you 
might have thought it a rabbit-path; and yet the 
still has been here undisturbed for ten years. To 
maintain a still without a path is part of the business. 
Following the steep trail to the bottom of the ravine, 
you soon find yourself at the still, which consists 
of a low roof covering a little furnace made of stones. 
In one end of the furnace is cemented the copper 
retort, a picturesque object suggesting wizards and 
alchemists. The pipe connects the retort with the 
"worm" that lies coiled in a keg of running water, 
and from which through a tube is escaping in a 
slender stream the precious liquor that resembles 
water in looks but not in taste. A vat or two of 
"beer," or fermenting meal, giving forth a sour, 
yeasty smell, a few jugs and kegs waiting to be 
filled — such is the moonshiner's still. The fire is 
made of rails or poles, one end burning in the fur- 
nace. To feed the fire, it is only necessary to push 
up the fuel as the ends bum off. It is better not to 
chop wood in the neighborhood of a still, lest chips 
betray the workman. 

A visit to the moonshine still, no matter how 
often one may go, never ceases to be exciting. It 



2i6 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

may be the spice of danger attached to it that makes 
the fire glow with so red and sinister an eye in the 
rude furnace, and light up so dramatically the human 
figures in the wild glen closely curtained with laurel 
and rhododendron leaves. Sometimes the inside of 
the still is almost as dark as night, because of no 
windows and the close-pressing foliage, when one's 
feelings are heightened in proportion. 

Notwithstanding the abundance of "moonshine" 
one seldom sees drunkenness in the mountains, 
though one would do well, so it is said, to avoid cer- 
tain regions of a Saturday night, for then the lovers 
of strong waters betake themselves to secret places 
in the woods, where bottles change hands and young 
men on the way home sing out of tune. 

It is not long since, walking along the roads of a 
Saturday afternoon, one would see a fresh-cut laurel 
bush lying in the path or in the middle of the road. 
If you followed the direction in which it pointed, 
you would find another one at the first intersecting 
path, either pointing up the path or away from it. 
You might not notice these bushes, but there were 
those who would. Every mountaineer, seeing a 
fresh-cut laurel bush in the road of a Saturday 
"evening," — it is evening here after midday, — 
knew it to be what the gypsies call a patter an, and 
that to follow the direction in which it pointed would 
lead him finally to some well-hidden spot where a 
man with a jug was waiting for customers. The 
patteran would guide any one to the appointed place, 
but unless you were a regular customer or known to 



A VANISHING ROMANCE 217 

be going with honest intentions you would not find 
any one when you got there. You might notice, 
however, a man sauntering along the path ahead of 
you, loudly whistling. 

Yes, the moonshiner seems almost to have van- 
ished from many parts of the North Carolina moun- 
tains, with whatever of romance the story-books 
have attached to him. The people who still demand 
strong waters may know how to get them, but one 
no longer sees the patteran of Saturday evenings, 
nor those rows of odd-smelling molasses jugs on the 
platform of the railway station, fearlessly awaiting 
the coming of the train. 



XXI 

CHURCH AND SCHOOL 

WHEN you see little groups of people assembled 
at the houses or moving from place to place, 
the men newly shaven, the women and children 
dressed in their best, you may know it is Sunday. 
When there is no church, everybody goes visiting, 
and one should think from the numbers collected 
in the dooryards of some of the houses that these 
visitations must strain the capacity of the bean-pot 
considerably. For whoever comes must be invited 
to dinner. 

If it is "preaching-day" the people are found all 
moving towards one point, the settlement church, 
which, like the school-house, generally stands "at 
a point equally inconvenient for everybody." In 
the villages and larger settlements, the minister is 
resident, and the churches are like other country 
churches, but outside the villages, services are con- 
ducted in the barnlike little "church-houses" by an 
itinerant preacher, the frequency of whose visits 
depends upon the size of his parish and the distances 
he has to travel. Hence it happens that upon the 
death of a person in a remote district, although the 
actual "burying" takes place at once, one may be 
invited weeks or months or even a year or more 
afterward to attend the " funeral," a very important 



CHURCH AND SCHOOL 219 

ceremony which is frequently deferred until the 
presence of some favorite preacher is obtainable, 
and to which come friends and relatives from far 
and near. 

The itinerant preacher is nearly always a native 
who has very little more " book-larnin' " than the 
rest of the people, and who may be seen in the field 
on week days ploughing with his "ole mule" ex- 
actly like his neighbors. He chooses his calling be- 
cause of his natural gifts, his reward oftentimes being 
the opportunity to exercise his talents. Once, ask- 
ing the wife of a hard-working farmer preacher how 
much he got for his arduous Sunday services, some- 
times requiring him to start the day before, the 
astonishing reply was, "Oh, he don't get nothing. 
He says it takes them as long to come and hear him 
as it takes him to preach, and the least he can do, if 
they take the trouble to come, is to preach to them." 
A novel and refreshing view of pastoral duty in these 
days. 

The people as a rule are Baptists, though there are 
a few Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian 
centres which are rapidly enlarging, but the religion 
of the mountains may be said to take naturally the 
Baptist form, and when you see a crowd down on 
the river-bank some Sunday, you may be sure there 
is a "baptizing" going on. 

The people are devout and good church-goers, but 
the old-time native preacher knows how to preach 
nothing but doctrine, he produces emotional effect 
by intonation and the frequent introduction of a 



220 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

long-drawn and hysterical "ah" — thus, "Oh, 
Lord — ah — be — ah — merciful — ah — to these 
thy — ah — children — ah," and so it goes, with 
increasing intensity for an hour or more. The effect 
of this must be heard to be appreciated. To preach 
less than an hour, no matter how much or what may 
be said, is a sign of incompetency. 

On "preaching-Sunday" the people conscien- 
tiously go to church, however distant it may be, but 
the prayer-meetings introduced by newcomers have 
slight attendance. "I reckon they're clar plumb 
dilatory," the Baptist minister's wife, who washed 
clothes for summer visitors, explained of her neigh- 
bors who could not be induced to attend a mid-week 
meeting. 

Besides the orthodox Baptists, there are various 
offshoots, such as the "Washfoot Babdists," and 
very popular just now, the "Wholly Sanctified," 
the mystic meaning of whose doctrine, being liter- 
ally Interpreted by some erring brethren, is a cause 
of much trouble both to the defenders of the faith 
and the community at large. Under the Smoky 
Mountain we heard of a sect of " Barkers," who, the 
people said, in their religious frenzy run and bark up 
a tree in the belief that Christ is there. 

The mountain school, like the mountain church, 
varies with the locality, out in the country resem- 
bling the barnlike church-house, only being smaller 
and, until very recently, built of logs. It sometimes 
stands In the lonely forest so far from any one that 
finding the school-house seems to be the child's first 



CHURCH AND SCHOOL 221 

step to an education, the second step being to acquire 
learning in spite of the opportunities offered. The 
log school-house was picturesque in the extreme, 
but as an educational institution it lacked many 
things. Sometimes it lacked windows, relying upon 
the cracks between the logs and the open door for 
light and ventilation. Its furnishing consisted of 
benches, and a chair for the teacher, while the books 
were few and as antiquated as the furniture. The 
condition of the school-house in the remoter regions, 
oftentimes did not greatly interest the people. Once 
upon protesting against a school-house with no 
windows, the father of several of the children in 
attendance replied that the children's eyes were 
strong and it did them no harm to learn their lessons 
in the dark. 

"Book-larnin"' evidently is not the thing that 
most absorbs the remote mountaineer's waking 
hours. He takes his children's schooling as he takes 
their measles, not very seriously. A few parents are 
anxious to have their children educated, the rest are 
indifferent, not quite comprehending what good can 
come to the children from something they them- 
selves have had so little use for. Nor can one blame 
those parents who prefer to keep the children at 
home rather than send them miles, it may be, through 
the forest and over rushing streams, to the school- 
house where school " takes up" for only a few weeks 
in the year, and where the teacher, like the rest of the 
people, knows little more than how to be kind. The 
advantages of such schooling are apparent, and one 



222 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

wonders whether that father were more a philoso- 
pher or a humorist who, being condoled with because 
the school was so far away, "reckoned" it was just 
as well because the children were therefore better 
contented to stay at home. Another parent, phil- 
osophizing upon the questionable advantages of 
" book-larnin' " for his children, ended with the opti- 
mistic assertion, "Well, I reckon it don't hurt 'em 
noway — they so soon fergit it all." And the woman 
who said contentedly, "I can't neither read nor 
write, but I don't need to, for God has given me a 
pretty wit," summed up the ancient philosophy of 
a large part of the mountains. 

Passing a roadside school-house at "recess" 
time, one is astonished at the number of children 
crowding about the building. The forest may seem 
like an uninhabited wilderness, yet there are children 
enough to supply a small village. And even at the 
school-house far from the road, and hidden so well 
that it is cause for wonder that the children ever 
find it, one has seen them come darting out of the 
forest like rabbits, barefooted and sunbonneted, 
carrying such books as they had, and swinging their 
"dinner buckets" — lard pails most of them. If 
you expect to find these young backwoodsmen as 
shy as quails and overcome at the unprecedented 
appearance of strangers in their midst, you will be 
mistaken. They are not shy, and they are not bold, 
these children of the forest of Arden. They are glad 
to see you, and show it in smiles as broad as nature 
has made provision for. You feel that if you stayed a 



CHURCH AND SCHOOL 223 

little longer they would all invite 5 ou to go home 
with them. 

There is no truant officer in the mountains, and no 
need of one. The children love to go to school and 
go so long as there is a school day left, unless circum- 
stances in the form of -'curger brothers aryi sisters 
and the stern hand of parental control f^bid. Per- 
haps their devotion is partly accounted for in the 
length of the school year, wnich lasts fr^ . ai six weeks, 
to three or four months. You do not have time to 
get tired of going to a school that lasts only six -/eeks 
with forty-six weeks of vacation to look .'-^- p^ d to. 

The log school-house is fast vanishing from the 
North Carolina mountains where so many changes 
have been made within a few years. And while the 
schools hidden in the heart of the wilderness are un- 
doubtedly still primitive enough to compete with 
any of the noted log schools that nurtured ge.^ius in 
former days, genius is not nurtured in them here, for 
it can quickly find its way to the better schools of 
the villages that are becoming more and more ac- 
cessible. Indeed, educational opportunities are in- 
creasing on all sides at the same quick pace that 
characterizes the other "improvements" that are 
now transforming the wilderness into something 
else, though it must not be supposed that there is 
yet no room for improvement. 

There are schools for higher education, colleges 
and industrial schools, in the mountains themselves, 
as well as In the country just below the mountains, 
and now a law has been passed which retires the 



224 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

unlettered mountain girl as a teacher in favor of the 
one whiu can show a normal school certificate, there 
being three normal schools in the mountains, as well 
as normal departments in other mountain institu- 
tions. The school-houses are being rebuilt, and even 
now tk'. last log school-hoiio^^ 'nay have closed its 
doors forever on the yoatii of the North Carolina 
mountains. 

Ten yearj ago statfetics of illiteracy in these 
mountains were almost startling. It was calculated 
that there was a school attendance of only about 
one third of the children of school age, while the 
condition of the buildings, the quality of the teach- 
ing, and the length of the school year in the country 
districts were such as to leave those who attended 
school little better instructed than those who did not. 
Since that time much has been done to wake up 
the people to the value of education, as well as in 
providing means to such an end, but necessarily 
there yet remains a large army of mountain people 
who can neither read nor write. 

The older educational institutions are of course in 
or near Asheville, and these have steadily bettered 
their equipment with the passing of time. Now all 
through the mountains one finds the established vil- 
lage schools increasing in efficiency and new schools 
being started. Among the educational institutions 
none give better promise than the industrial schools 
that have sprung up here and there within recent 
years. Thf hurches are now as a rule putting forth 
their most eamest efforts in this direction, wisely 



CHURCH AND SCHOOL 225 

seeking to do that which the regular educational 
institutions leave undone, and many earnest souls 
are devoting their powers to teaching the people 
how to live as well as how to think and believe. 

Perhaps no better illustration of the struggles and 
conquests of these workers can be given than that of 
Brevard Institute, near Brevard, in the French 
Broad Valley. This school, started in 1895, through 
the self-sacrificing efforts of one man has struggled 
on, kept alive mainly by that internal heat which 
alone gives any institution real growth-power. 
To-day it enrolls nearly two hundred pupils, most of 
them girls, as the department for young men is not 
yet fully developed. Here come young people from 
all parts of the mountains and for a price within 
their means receive home, education, and training 
in the practical things of life. That the spirit in 
which the school was founded yet persists is felt the 
moment one enters its doors, when one becomes 
aware of such an atmosphere of love and helpful- 
ness, from the principal down to the youngest pupil, 
that it is a pleasure to go there and bask in the 
warmth of it. Not that, even to-day, the equipment 
is anything like adequate to the needs, but the re- 
sults prove that the poorest tools in loving hands can 
accomplish much. 

Besides the ordinary academic subjects and special 
religious training, the pupils are here taught "a 
dread of debt, promptness in attending to business 
obligations of every sort, a love for thoroughness and 
accuracy in doing work of every sort, self-control 



226 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

in the expenditure of money, and a knowledge of 
simple business transactions." There is a business 
course, a department of music, one of domestic art 
where is taught dressmaking, millinery, and lace- 
making, and a department of domestic science where 
the subjects taught are housework, cookery, laun- 
dry, and mending. In the normal department, "it 
is the intention to show young teachers how manual 
training, sand tables, dramatization, phonics, and so 
forth, can be introduced and profitably used even 
where there is no equipment." Thus young people 
are prepared to go home to the little mountain 
schools and there spread abroad the information 
and the ideals they have themselves received, as 
well as to go, if they are so inclined, into the world of 
action now opening below and in the mountains, and 
whose demands for helpers in all departments is in 
excess of a competent supply. Brevard Institute is 
but one among a number of industrial schools that 
are doing their part, against all sorts of difficulties, 
to help on the transformation that is so rapidly 
taking place in the Southern mountains. 

Another form of practical education is well illus- 
trated in the Allenstand Cottage Industries, which is 
settlement work carried on in remote, and what one 
might call side-tracked, districts. This work began, 
with a day school as a nucleus, in a cove in the 
mountains in the northwestern part of Buncombe 
County, long before the present wave of prosperity 
had drawn near to the mountains. Here the difficult 
question of how to bring to the people material help 



CHURCH AND SCHOOL 227 

without spiritually hurting them was finally an- 
swered, we are told, by the gift from a well-to-do 
"neighbor woman" of a home-woven coverlet forty 
years old, slightly faded but still beautiful in its 
golden brown and cream hues. 

This worn old coverlet became as it were a palimp- 
sest whereon love deciphered the history of the past 
for the enlightenment of the present. Looms had 
almost disappeared, chemical dyes had replaced the 
old-time vegetable dyes in coloring the "linsey 
cloth," still sometimes made, and the yarn spun for 
stockings. But the spinning-wheels were there and 
gave a clue by which the settlement workers ingeni- 
ously found their way out of the labyrinth. Wool 
from a neighboring valley was obtained and given 
out to be carded and spun by hand, then, in the 
words of one of the workers : — 

"The coloring was the next business, and it was a 
matter of time to learn from the older women the 
secrets of the indigo pot and of the coloring with 
barks and leaves. We learned that for the best re- 
sults the indigo dye should be used before the wool 
was spun. Whence the old phrase ' dyed in the wool.' 
The formula for a blue-pot demanded, besides the 
indigo, bran, madder, and lye, the ingredient of 
patience, till the pot, set beside the hearth to keep 
it at the right temperature, saw fit to 'come.' Then 
the dipping of the wool began. For a deep blue this 
dipping must be repeated five or six times, and the 
pot 'renewed up' betweentimes, as the strength of 
the color was exhausted. The coloring with madder 



228 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

was less of a circumstance. Gradually we learned 
of many other dyes, of leaves and barks and flowers, 
giving us a variety of soft hues — browns, yellows, 
greens, orange, and also an excellent black. The 
true green is obtained by dyeing first with a yellow 
dye and then dipping in the blue-pot, but a good 
olive green is given by using hickory bark with 
something to 'set the dye.' Every year we gather 
the ' bay leaves ' for the bright yellow, and harvest 
for winter use the 'yellow dyeflower' growing on the 
high ridges. 

"But to return to the beginnings. When yarn 
enough for three coverlets had been prepared, the 
next step was to find a weaver of the double draft — 
that is, of the coverlet material with shotover de- 
signs. This requires four sets of harness in the loom, 
instead of two as for plain cloth, and four treadles as 
well. The warp is 'drawn in' and the weaving 
'tramped' according to a paper pattern which is 
pinned up on the front of the loom. A number of 
women in the cove knew well how to weave plain 
linsey and jeans, but no one could weave the cover- 
lets. Sixteen miles away, and farther from the rail- 
road, we found a family where mother and daughters 
had great store of spreads, old and new, to which 
they were continually adding. As they showed these 
treasures to us, the variety of design was bewilder- 
ing. At last we chose two patterns, and the women 
undertook to weave our yarn for us. It was an ex- 
citing moment when, two weeks later, our messenger 
returned carrying across his horse's back the long 



CHURCH AND SCHOOL 229 

roll of weaving. Now came the question whether 
there was a market for such work. This was soon 
ascertained. Our first coverlets were sold in a few 
weeks, and the demand for more was enough to 
justify at least a small start in business. So an enter- 
prising young woman near us volunteered to learn 
the double draft. A loom was found for sale in the 
'Ivy Country,' and hauled to us, more wool bought 
and more spinners set to work." 

Thus started what has grown to be an Important 
industry to that part of the mountains. From this 
cove one of the settlement workers pressed yet deeper 
into the wilderness, to the "Laurel Country," as all 
that region drained by tributaries of Big Laurel 
Creek is called. Here, away up on Little Laurel 
Creek, near the Tennessee line, almost due north 
from Hot Springs, and close under the wild Bald 
Mountains, at a place called Allenstand, the work 
was begun again. Once Allenstand was a stopping- 
place on one of those early roads over which passed 
the traffic in cattle, sheep, horses, and swine from 
Tennessee to the eastern lowlands, and from this 
it got its name, a "stand" being a place where 
drovers stopped overnight with their charges, this 
particular one being kept by a man named Allen. 
Allenstand may have been prosperous in those days, 
but the tide of traffic becoming diverted, the people 
living there were left to primitive conditions until 
the coming of the woman who was to open the doors 
to them, for it is to one woman that the "Laurel 
Country" owes its prosperity. It is always the indi- 



230 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

vidual who divines and conquers the difficulties in an 
undertaking of this sort, and so signal has been the 
success of this inspired worker that she is known to 
the outside world as the "Bishop of the Laurel 
Country," for about Allenstand as a centre have 
sprung up a number of similar settlements at inter- 
vals of a few miles. 

To the making of the more elaborate coverlets was 
added the simpler weaving of linsey which the coun- 
try people themselves cannot afford to buy, it having 
become a luxury for dwellers in the outer world, to 
whom it offers itself, not only for outing wear, but 
also as suitable material for tailor-made gowns ! Also 
floor rugs were made, as well as rag rugs for which 
the colors are chosen and blended with very pleasing 
results. Indeed, there is work done and experiments 
constantly being made in various kinds of weaving 
and embroidering, as well as in basket-work and 
simple wood-carving. And there is now a room at 
Asheville where the products of this settlement are 
on sale. 

Younger than Allenstand, and more remarkable as 
an illustration of the possibilities of the mountaineer 
for a high type of development, is the industrial 
school at Biltmore. Here the rector of All Souls', the 
Biltmore church, recognizing the needs of the people, 
secured the services of two women gifted with the 
genius necessary to carry such a work to perfec- 
tion, and who in ten years' time have developed to 
its present remarkable point what is known as the 
"Biltmore Industries," the history of which is as 



CHURCH AND SCHOOL 231 

interesting as a story. The school was designed to 
meet the needs of the people connected with the 
Biltmore estate, and the enthusiastic founders 
started with four boys, the first one of whom had 
to be paid to come ! To-day some of those who first 
entered are carving chairs for the great establish- 
ment of Tiffany of New York, and more than one 
hundred of the pupils are earning a livelihood by 
their woodcarving craft. One young man, upon be- 
coming engaged to be married, made for his future 
home a whole set of beautiful Chippendale furniture. 
The v/orkers are paid from the moment they begin, 
and the older ones are not only self-supporting, but 
they are technically and artistically educated to the 
enjoyment of a kind of life which otherwise they 
could neither have attained nor appreciated. 

Woodcarving is not the only work done at the 
Biltmore Industries, as witness the rolls of cloth 
lying on the table of the industrial rooms, cloth 
woven by the women in their own looms and colored 
by natural plant dyes. There is also embroidery, 
beautiful in color, design, and workmanship, and 
the girls, after some diplomatic manoeuvres to over- 
come the opposition of the militant sex, now also 
carve. Thus In the embroidery, carving, and weaving 
the women, like the men, are getting far more than 
pay for their work. One of the pleasures of going to 
Biltmore is a visit to the rooms of the Industries 
where the work of the people Is shown and ex- 
plained. 



XXII 

THE CHEROKEE NATION 

THE railroads that have triumphantly sur- 
mounted the Blue Ridge and taken the moun- 
tains, as it were, by storm, make it easy in these 
days to get within reach of the formerly almost inac- 
cessible places. Besides those that have crossed the 
mountains, and the short line up the French Broad 
Valley to the "Sapphire Country," there is the 
"Murphy Branch" that connects Asheville with 
Atlanta, Georgia, by a circuitous route down the 
very centre of the plateau around and over obstruct- 
ing mountains. 

At intervals along the Murphy Branch, villages 
have grown up, the largest of which, Waynesville, is 
beautifully placed close to the Balsam Mountains, 
and has long been a favorite summer resort. The next 
most important are Sylva and Dillsboro*, lying 
between the Balsam and Cowee Mountains, and 
beyond these, Whittier and Bryson City, between 
the Great Smoky and Cowee Mountains. 

From any of these villages one can start afoot or 
otherwise upon delightful trips through some of the 
finest scenery of the mountains, and from two of 
them, Whittier and Bryson City, roads lead into the 
Cherokee Indian Country that lies on the lower 
slopes of the Great Smoky Mountain. The Indian 



THE CHEROKEE NATION 233 

Country affords one a plunge into the wilderness in 
more senses than one, for not only does one find 
here wild scenery, but also the original inhabit- 
ants, or at least a very orderly remnant of that 
mysterious and picturesque race that before 
the coming of the white man roamed these soli- 
tudes. 

I The Indians of this region were Cherokees, and 
there seem to have been several tribes, not always 
on amicable terms with one another, judging from 
the number of arrow-heads found in certain fields 
near Asheville. The country about Asheville is be- 
lieved to have been a common hunting-ground with- 
out permanent settlements, which would account 
for the arrow-strewn battle-fields as well as for the 
dearth of Indian names in that section. 

The white man when he came did not enter upon 
the scene in a way to inspire confidence in the red 
man, who finally tried to hold back the hand of des- 
tiny by massacring the invaders. This resulted in an 
armed force entering the mountains in the summer 
of 1779, burning the villages, killing the Indians, and 
destroying their growing crops. 

The treatment of the Cherokees by the white man 
affords no better reading than the treatment of the 
other Indian tribes by their civilized conquerors, 
and finally many of the more restless spirits among 
the Indians went West in search of new hunting- 
grounds. Many, however, stayed at home and made 
the best of the new order of things, until the white 
conqueror finally decided to remove the whole 



234 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

Cherokee Nation to lands set aside in the Indian 
Territory. 

Now, it is one thing to decide to move an Indian, 
and another thing to do it. You have first to catch 
your Indian, and when the hour struck for the Chero- 
kees to go West, — nothing was said about their 
growing up with the country, — lo, the band had 
shrunk to half its size. This half was deported and 
men went out to hunt up the other half. Any one 
who thinks he can find an Indian hiding in the wilds 
of western North Carolina, has not seen the country. 
He might as well spend his time hunting for the lost 
ten tribes of Israel. In course of time the Indians 
returned to their homes and went on peacefully rais- 
ing corn, grunting emphatic denials to any suggestion 
to go West. Finally, the large territory they now 
own, over one hundred thousand acres, was bought 
for them with their own money by one who cham- 
pioned their rights, so that the Indians who would 
not go West now occupy some of the most pictur- 
esque and beautiful as well as fertile land in the 
North Carolina mountains. They are known as the 
"Eastern band of the Cherokees," and are not "re- 
servation Indians" in the ordinary meaning of the 
words, since they own their land by right of purchase 
and are true citizens of the Republic with all the 
privileges of citizenship. These Indians are as law- 
abiding as their white neighbors, more so, since they 
have never distilled unlawful "moonshine," but 
have only drunk it, when they could get it, until the 
chief of the tribe, becoming aware of the devasta- 



THE CHEROKEE NATION 235 

tion being wrought among his people by the use of 
whiskey, did that which might have done honor to 
any civiHzed leader. Calling a council, he told the 
people that the only way to save their nation was 
to abandon the use of whiskey which he himself 
would do from that day, whereupon almost the 
whole tribe joined him, and although some fell from 
grace under temptation, there was a marked change 
for the better from that time. 

The easiest way to get into the Indian Country is 
from Whittier over the road that goes up the Ocono- 
lufty River to Cherokee, the principal Indian settle- 
ment, and where is a government school. Another 
and more picturesque though longer way, a distance, 
if one remembers rightly, of twenty-five miles, is to 
go from Waynesville through the Jonathan Creek 
Valley and over Soco Mountain by one of the most 
nearly impassable roads in the mountains. But by 
going this way one enters the Indian country from 
the primeval forest, which has a certain appropriate- 
ness. Jonathan Creek Valley, deep, and so narrow 
that the neighbors say the cobblers there have to 
sew their shoes lengthwise, lies close under the north 
end of the high Balsam Mountain, and is one of 
those quaint survivals of other days that makes one 
feel, upon entering it, as though a door had been shut 
on the modern world. The road follows up through 
the peaceful valley, past the picturesque houses with 
the cornfields showing above the roofs, and the gar- 
dens full of flowers, past the high-wheeled mills, and 
across the charming fords banked in laurel where 



236 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

Jonathan Creek crosses and recrosses the road. You 
go on and up the mountain-side where the forest is 
stately, still, and ancient, and where underneath the 
trees, on all sides as far as one can see, a bed of dewy 
ferns covers the earth, the green fronds nested in 
shadows. 

The road ascends through the ferns and you notice 
that Jonathan Creek has become a little rippling 
brook, a new-born child of the forest and the clouds. 
When you get to the gap of the mountains you find 
in the "old field" there, a large cold spring, the 
cradle out of which Jonathan Creek leaps to go 
dancing down the mountain-side, and away to the 
turbid plains below. 

At the gap you see Soco Fall and hear it thunder 
down the lonely cliff. It is the wild beginning of Soco 
Creek that dashes down the other side of the moun- 
tain, and the road following down the gorge soon 
presents such an appearance that you adopt the 
Indian mode of progression, leaving the driver to 
survive or perish as fate ordains. To cross an In- 
dian's conception of a footbridge over the torrent 
dashing uproariously against the boulders that 
strew its course is only one degree better than trying 
to cross the washed-out fords in a carriage. Yet 
nothing can dim your pleasure in the splendid fresh- 
ness and mystery of the shadowy gorge where the 
water shouts in a thousand voices, for you are in the 
Indian Country where nature seems a little wilder 
and more secret. The writhing limbs and deep-green 
foliage of monster rhododendrons crowd the banks. 



THE CHEROKEE NATION 237 

Above them tower dark hemlocks. It is twilight in 
the gorge, although the sun shines brightly on the 
tree- tops. 

Once in a while you get a glimpse of noiseless forms 
flitting through the forest. But you are not afraid, 
for the Indians long ago laid aside their tomahawks 
and arrows, along with their feathers and war-paint. 
They are watching us out of curiosity, and their 
presence adds the one needed touch to the romance 
of the road. As we get lower down, a lonely, neat- 
looking house occasionally stands near the rushing 
river, tightly closed and looking as though unin- 
habited, though your driver assures you that black 
eyes are peering at you through the holes between 
the logs. But when you meet Big Witch carrying 
his fish spear and clad all in shop-made clothes, and 
two Indian women dressed in calico, each carrying 
what should be a pappoose, but is only a little brown 
baby in a pink frock just like any other baby, — 
when this happens, your romantic fancies take flight 
like a flock of startled birds. At the government 
school, well placed on a slope near the Oconolufty 
River, some two hundred young Indians are learn- 
ing the white man's way of life, boys and girls in 
about equal numbers. 

The Cherokee is not a noble red man in appear- 
ance, having the flat, broad type of face with wide- 
apart eyes, instead of the aquiline features of the 
wooden warrior that used to stand outside the to- 
bacco-shops. The Indians cultivate the land, raise a 
few horses and cattle, make soapstone pipes to sell 



238 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

to tourists, and weave baskets. Their lack of pro- 
gress is not due to want of natural gifts we were told 
at the school. They can, if they would, but they are 
utterly wanting in the first great incentive to work, 
a love of acquisition. The negro soon develops a 
desire to possess things, the Cherokee never. Per- 
haps he is the true philosopher, and seeing too far 
ahead asks, "What is the use?" 

The Indian Country lies in a cul-de-sac between 
the Balsams and the Smokies, two of the grandest 
ranges in the Appalachians, and through it flows 
the Oconolufty River, swift, broad, and clear as 
crystal, its bed strewn with boulders, large trees 
guarding its banks, and rhododendrons dipping to 
the water. This romantic stream being too swift for 
a " bench " is spanned by air-line bridges, the thought 
of crossing which chills the blood. In its calmer 
reaches, one sees the long dugout canoes of the Indi- 
ans tied to the trees along the bank, or perchance an 
Indian girl crossing the river standing securely at 
the bow of the craft and paddling against the cur- 
rent. 



XXIII 

THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 

IS it the name, or the literary uses of the last few 
years, that has invested the Smoky Mountains 
with that feeling of mystery that seems always to 
hang about them? Those who have seen them rising 
in ghost-like beauty high against the western sky 
need, however, no explanation of their power over 
the mind. One approaches them with a peculiar 
feeling of anticipation, a feeling almost reverential, 
as though about to unveil some great mystery. One 
approaches them also with a little inner trepidation, 
they have always seemed so far away, so delicately 
blue and ethereal, or else as their name suggests 
they have been to the imagination pale emanations 
from a burning world, — suppose that closer ac- 
quaintance with them should dispel a cherished 
illusion ! 

But have no fear. These mountains possess a 
double personality. The dreamlike slopes you have 
known and loved will remain, only there will be 
added to the domain of your memory another Smoky 
Mountain Range, the possession of which is also a 
rare pleasure. These new mountains, with their 
grand trees and wide spaces, their freshness and 
fragrance, their dangerous cliffs, steep slopes, and 
deep ravines, their rushing streams and their almost 



240 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

impenetrable wildness, become a refuge, — glorious 
heights where you wander in imagination when 
weary of the dust of the world. 

For the Smoky Mountains are at once the most 
ethereal and the most substantial of created things, 
ethereal when you see them exquisitely blue or 
pearly white phantoms in the containing heavens, 
tremendous realities when you are among their wild 
cliffs and inclosed by their primeval forests. 

Unlike the Blue Ridge, the Smoky Mountains do 
not hold out inviting levels for man's occupation. 
They sweep in steep slopes up from both sides to a 
narrow summit, in places a mere knife-edge ridge, 
and their flanks are set with precipices, ravines, and 
deep moist coves out of which rise large forest trees. 
They are yet the home of the wild animals that have 
been driven from most oth^r parts of the mountains, 
and their rhododendron and laurel labyrinths are so 
dense and so extensive that to get lost in them may 
mean destruction. Their feet lie in the pleasant val- 
leys, their heads in the clouds. For a distance of 
over fifty miles the Tennessee and North Carolina 
state line runs along the crest of the Great Smoky 
Mountains without crossing a gap below five thou- 
sand feet high, while it surmounts Clingman Dome, 
Mount Guyot, and other summits at an elevation 
above six thousand feet. Below, these mountains 
are covered with the finest hardwood trees left in the 
United States; above, they are wrapped in spruce 
and balsam fir, a dark unbroken forest of which 
covers all but the very tops. For like the summits of 




A GOOD FOOT-BRIDGE 



THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 241 

all the highest mountains, these too are bare, — no 
matter how small the opening may be, the moun- 
tain-top is free. 

But while there are no large settlements and few 
signs of the devastation that follows the coming of 
man, the long line of the Great Smoky Mountains 
is not uninhabited. The valleys that run up into the 
mountains hold little nests of houses, and here and 
there, far up on the mountain-side, in a cove or on a 
fertile "bench," one may find a clearing with its 
lonely cabin and its cornfield, to be reached only by 
a trail through the forest. 

The Great Smokies yet remain, as a whole, the 
most inaccessible part of the mountain region. No 
road crosses them, few paths penetrate into their 
fastnesses. To go to any of the high peaks is an 
arduous climb requiring a guide. And yet it is not 
difficult to ascend into their forests far enough to get 
a sense of the glory of the heights. 

Being at Cherokee, in the Indian country, instead 
of following the road down the Oconolufty River 
to the railroad, it is far wiser to go up it and thereby 
get into the very heart of the Smokies. As you as- 
cend the narrowing valley, you have a feeling of 
exhilaration, an increasing sense of splendid freedom, 
with which the increasing altitude may have some- 
thing to do. The many streams, that come hurrying 
down from their birth chambers In the clouds, cross 
the road to enter the river. Hence there are fords, 
beautiful shady places under the trees and the vine- 
draped bushes. And then the way becomes so nar- 



242 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

row that there Is not room for both road and river, 
and the two, for some distance, become one, the river 
by this time having grown shallow enough to make 
such a liberty possible. This often happens in the 
mountains, and a stranger, seeing you slowly van- 
ishing up a river with no apparent exit, might con- 
clude that you had lost, not only your way but your 
senses. And you do feel a little as though you had 
taken leave of the ordinary ways of life and entered 
into a sort of enchanted world as you splash along 
through a tunnel roofed by tree-tops and paved with 
flashing water, the leafy walls embroidered with the 
strong, dark lines and white flower clusters of the 
Rhododendron maximum. 

These roadways in the rivers, these entrancing 
halls paved with silver, and walled with chryso- 
prase, topaz, and emerald, are among the most cher- 
ished memories of the mountains. There is such a 
road — let us see — in the "Plumtree Country," 
where, in the springtime, the silver-floored tunnel is 
roofed with the delicate colors of coming leaves, and 
out of which you pass into a world radiant with plum 
blossoms, and where the road, no longer paved with 
silver, is bright red and overhung with blossoming 
trees. Clouds of airy white flowers float above you 
and about you, pouring intoxicating fragrance into 
the air you breathe, — and what is more inebriating 
than the breath of the wild plum ! Later in the sea- 
son bright red plums replace the flowers, giving 
forth a spicy and joyous odor that tempts you to 
taste again and again the sparkling juices. The road 



THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 243 

is fairly covered with the bounty of the tree. The 
path you travel is red with plums. 

One remembers another union of road and river 
near the headwaters of the Linville, and alongside 
which a footpath has been cut in the laurel. There 
used to be a short one near Traumfest, where the 
overarching bushes were twined with the clematis 
that bears large pink, urn-shaped flowers, and — 
but enough, one could recall a bookful about the 
fords and riverbed roads of the mountains. 

When you get to where the shining Oconolufty 
forks, you take the left-hand "prong" and goon 
until the next fork when you turn to the right, the 
stream becoming ever wilder and narrower and, if 
possible, more sparkling. The farther you go the 
more difficult the road becomes. There are few people 
living as far as this, for you have gone beyond the 
Indian boundary and are close to the uninhabited 
mountain. Yet here one's artist friend got one of her 
loveliest pictures composed of a long, gray old house, 
pale-blue cabbages, bright flowers, and mountains 
so divinely blue as to make the senses swim. 

When you reach "Jim Mac's place," you stop, for 
this is the end of what has ceased to deserve the name 
of road. There is nothing beyond but the steeply 
rising mountain with its primeval forest, where the 
red deer and the brown bear yet roam, and the pan- 
ther and the wildcat make their home. Big trout 
lie hid in the bright waters of Laurel Fork that comes 
leaping down icy cold from its embowering springs 
three thousand feet above your head. At Jim Mac's 



244 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

one hears thrilling tales of fisherman's luck and 
hunter's adventures, while one young man reluct- 
antly admits that he never did bear-hunt, but has 
only squirrel-hunted. 

And from Jim Mac's you go to the very top of the 
mountain, there where you step on the Tennessee 
line without knowing it. Not to one of those grand 
fir-clad summits that few people reach, but to a gap 
at an elevation of some fifty-five hundred feet lying 
on the ridge of the Smokies somewhere between 
Clingman's Dome and Mount Guyot, two of the 
great mountains of the range, Clingman having 
contended long and ardently with Mount Mitchell 
for the honor of being the highest mountain in the 
East. 

We follow an obscure trail that our guide says in 
wartime was a sort of road across the mountains, 
and that it passed near an alum mine where during 
those troublous times the women got something to 
set the dyes of their homespun clothes. The horses 
we ride were born and bred in the mountains, the 
only kind of horse one ought to ride here, for he 
knows the ways of the woods and will go over a log 
or under it, climb, one is tempted to say, anything 
but a tree, take the situation philosophically if he 
falls down or you fall off, get up himself, or, if he 
cannot, wait patiently for help, and when it comes 
he will assist rather than hinder by his efforts. This 
horse that never gets nervous or frightened is intel- 
ligent and companionable to a high degree, the 
mountain horses often seeming to share the kindly 



THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 245 

nature of the people with whom they are intimately 
associated in all kinds of work, from ploughing a 
furrow or working a sorghum press to hauling logs 
over almost impassable roads or bearing their owners 
over almost impassable trails. 

The way up the mountain is now enchanting in 
its perfection of wildness. Oaks tower above you as 
you go, and tall locusts shade you, a giant chestnut 
here, a lordly cherry there, a stately ash, a royal 
tulip tree, mammoth hemlocks, standing where they 
please, all remind you that this is a primeval forest, 
planted by nature and by her husbanded through 
the millenniums. Here, too, along the cliffs and the 
streams, the rose-bay, splendid in the literal meaning 
of the word, adds to the shining of its polished leaves 
that of regal flower masses, for up here it is yet in 
bloom, although the time is August. These noble 
rhododendrons, that blossom with a freedom and a 
loveliness of color that belong with these vast sky- 
domed spaces, sometimes are not purple at all, but a 
clear bright rose-color seldom seen at lower levels. 

In the forest where the rocks are hidden from view 
under a thick carpet of moss, your horse wades knee- 
deep in luscious ferns, or his hoofs sink out of sight 
in tender oxalis leaves whose crowding flowers em- 
broider a rosy and white design over the green floor. 
You pass into a parklike grove of great beech trees, 
still and sweet. You see a large turkey on the top- 
most limb of a dead tree suddenly expand his wings 
and float away with incredible speed and lightness. 
A domestic turkey walking on the ground gives no 



246 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

hint of the almost ethereal lightness with which the 
wild bird projects himself into and through the air. 

As your body rises your spirits also mount. All 
the turmoil of mistaken humanity is down below 
those billowing forests that sweep into bottomless 
blue abysses of which you catch glimpses from some 
clififside. The clean, cool air is filled with tree odors, 
about you the wild denizens of these untroubled 
heights are roaming and, it may be, unseen, are 
watching you and wondering. A crackle of twigs — 
a light crashing noise in the laurel — what is it? 

The shadows among the trees are intensely blue, 
overhead white clouds sail in the boundless heavens, 
down the mossy cliffs streams leap like naiads newly 
escaped from some cavern of eternity. Where the 
view opens, fir-clad summits roll away like high 
green seas, to be transformed in the distance into 
that spirit-like semblance of mountains that seem to 
belong, not on earth, but to the realm of the sky. 

In a high-lying primeval forest one is often stirred 
by what might be called primeval feelings. Out of 
the solitudes come revelations. You look at a tree, 
grand, alone, touching as it were both earth and 
heaven, and it awakens in you strong emotion. 
What is this tree that thus can move you? As you 
stand questioning, a light flashes through your con- 
sciousness. The forest has answered. 

From this gap one gets no extensive outlook; we 
cannot see Clingman Dome, that lacks only about 
fifty feet of being as high as Mount Mitchell, nor 
Mount Guyot, nor any other of the high peaks of 



THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS 247 

the Smokies ; nevertheless we feel that we know the 
mountains, lacking only the supreme pleasure of 
traversing those balsam groves that cover the peaks. 
A new Smoky Mountain, strong and glorious, pro- 
jects itself into the imagination alongside the wraith- 
like shapes of those other Smoky Mountains one has 
so long known and loved. And over these splendid 
slopes, one sees in imagination the protecting arm of 
the new national park reach out, as it soon will, to 
save them forever from the power of the destroyer. 



XXIV 

HIGHLANDS 

THERE is joy also in the valleys. From them 
you look up to the mountains transfigured by a 
light that crowns them in beauty. In the valleys are 
the homes of the people, the leafy inclosing hills, and 
the winding roads, following which a new picture un- 
folds each moment as you pass along. 

Leaving Whittier and facing towards the Blue 
Ridge, one may follow the valleys across the plateau 
from one bordering range to the other. When you 
come to the beautiful Cullowhee Valley, you ought 
to be going the other way, however, for the Balsam 
Mountains, lying so splendidly against the sky, are 
behind you, and you are constantly looking back as 
the valley opens and shuts and those noble heights 
come and go. 

And what does one now see beyond the Balsams? 
— those spirit-like forms high in the sky? It is the 
line of the Smoky Mountains, rehabilitated since we 
left them, and restored to their wonted place in the 
heavens. As the road winds on and up, you turn to 
see again and yet again the deep-toned Balsams and 
that line of dream mountains that grows higher as 
you ascend. 

"It's been heavy draughting all the evening." 
These words from your driver bring your thoughts 



HIGHLANDS 249 

down to the road which, from recent rains and the 
passing of tanbark wagons, is, indeed, as he puts it, 
"terribly gouted out." But you are now up the 
mountain and crossing the gap where, at the turn in 
the road, that long white waterfall comes gliding 
down the slanting cliff, and beyond it in the distance 
the Balsam Mountains rise, purple, indigo blue, and 
deep green against a cloudy sky. 

Just beyond here you get some one to guide you a 
mile or two along a wild ravine where the jack- vine 
grows, to the upper falls of the Tuckasegee, one of 
the grandest falls in the mountains, the thunder of 
which is heard for a long distance. Although not so 
high as the other cascade seen from the road, it is 
far more impressive, for the much wider sheet of 
water leaps over a vertical cliff bordered on either 
side with stern walls of granite. Striking a project- 
ing ledge it separates into two parts to leap again, a 
mass of foam, to the bottom of the ravine. 

It is cool and sweet in the spray of the thundering 
waters and you reluctantly turn back and climb out 
of the shadowy gorge where the tall trees are draped 
in vines, among them the great jack-vine whose 
cables sagging heavily from the tree-tops produce a 
weird effect in the semi-twilight of the gorge. Nothing 
in the forest is more suggestive of tropical growths 
than these enormous vines with their large leaves, 
the bark peeling in tatters from the stem that when 
dead separates for its whole length into flat ribbons, 
black and strange-looking. 
' Out of the dark gorge, up to the bright sunlight 



250 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

of the road you climb, and continuing on your way, 
the cHffs that distinguish the country about High- 
lands soon begin to appear above the trees. Up you 
mount, now through a forest fragrant with hemlock 
and white azalea, now over cool, hurrying streams, 
now close to damp cliffs with little plants in the 
crevices, the way darkened by the hemlock trees 
that grow so freely here, on and up, finally to attain 
the very summit of the Blue Ridge — and find your- 
self at Highlands. 

Highlands, nearly four thousand feet high, lies on 
one of those tablelands of the Blue Ridge that seem 
to have been designed for the occupation of man. 
But it differs from all other parts of the Blue Ridge 
plateau, and indeed of the whole Appalachian uplift, 
in the tremendous precipices that all but surround 
it, seeming to lift it up and hold it aloft. For about 
Highlands are the grandest cliffs this side the Rocky 
Mountains. 

When at Highlands, one is always conscious of 
being in a high place, of inhabiting, as it were, the 
"Land of the Sky." From the village itself, which 
lies in about the centre of the tableland, there is no 
extensive view, only that ever-present sense of being 
up high and out in the sky. But just out of the village 
one discovers the truth ; there is no grander scenery 
in this part of the world than that immediately 
surrounding Highlands. And here, as in so many 
places in these mountains, one has that inner vision 
of beauty that man alone can add to a landscape. 
One sees in imagination the charms of nature en- 



HIGHLANDS 251 

hanced by those human touches that send us sight- 
seeing to foreign lands. Even in Italy, away from 
the seacoast there is nothing in the way of natural 
scenery more beautiful than our own Southern 
mountains, we lacking only that instinctive feeling 
for the beautiful that makes every son of that fair 
land build his house with pleasing lines and place it 
sympathetically in the landscape, the row of columns, 
the arcade, the terrace, the stone wall, the statue, 
put, as by inspiration, each in its perfect place. 

Nowhere in the mountains does one find more 
beautiful natural growths than at Highlands, where 
the laurel and rhododendron grow to trees and flam- 
ing azaleas set whole mountain-sides ablaze, and 
here one remembers finding wild lilies-of-the-valley. 
But that which characterizes the scenery of this 
region, separating it distinctly from the rest of the 
mountains, is the presence of the many bare preci- 
pices that on all sides drop into unseen abysses, the 
most terrible of all being the long wall of Whiteside 
Mountain, that makes a sheer descent of fifteen 
hundred feet and has the distinction of being the 
grandest precipice this side the Rockies. Yet even 
these cliffs cannot give a cruel aspect to the country, 
because over all their savage tops hang delicate vines 
and dainty shrubs. Smiling flowers of the rose-bay 
look fearlessly over the edge and the white lace of the 
fringe-bush sheds its perfume down the stern front 
of the rock. 

The nearest point of view at Highlands Is perhaps 
Black Rock, that drops in a sheer wall nearly a 



252 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

thousand feet into Horse Cove, and from whose rim 
one looks into a wide abyss floored with tree-tops, 
and beyond this to mountains billowing away as far 
as one can see. At a point on the brow of the preci- 
pice, far in from the road and surrounded by flowers 
that have escaped from its gardens, stands a house as 
though on guard, the first house of importance in 
this region, although many pleasant homes have 
since appeared. It was built by Captain S. P. Rav- 
enel, of Charleston, who came about a generation 
ago when life was yet so primitive that lumber had 
to be carted a distance of more than thirty miles 
up the mountains. The dining-room floor, made of 
alternate strips of black walnut and oak, reminds us 
that walnut trees were not uncommon in this region 
at the time the house was built. In the charming wil- 
derness the Ravenel family not only made a beauti- 
ful summer home for themselves, but, through their 
interest in the people about them, they stamped a 
lasting impress upon the community. For besides 
building roads and making other civic improvements, 
they built a church, and by their contact with the 
native people brought inspiration and hope to many 
a longing heart, as well as a knowledge of those re- 
finements of life which are man's latest and best 
inheritance. 

A favorite walk from Highlands is to the top of 
charming, flower-graced Satulah that rises some- 
thing less than a thousand feet above Highlands, 
and where one gets an open view in all directions. 
The granite walls of Whiteside, sheer and terrible, 



HIGHLANDS 253 

or else veiled in a misty blue atmosphere, sharp 
Chimney Top to the right of it and the bold form of 
ShortofT to the left, rise conspicuously above the 
countless mountains that reach away to the far Bal- 
sam and Pisgah Ranges, while against the western 
sky is seen the ever-beautiful form of the Nantahala 
Range. Turning now towards the south, away from 
the tumultuous sea of the high mountains, one looks 
off over the receding levels of Georgia, out of which 
rises the calm and beautiful form of the Rabun Bald, 
lending a great sense of peace to the landscape. 

The road from Highlands to Whiteside Mountain 
winds along through a thin forest and gives no hint 
of what is coming until you reach the "bench" of 
the mountain, where all of a sudden the land drops 
in a vertical wall to the valley below. From this 
bench the mountain-top rises precipitously above 
your head, the path up through the trees and bushes 
being very steep, like a flight of steps in places; but 
it is also very sweet, and you stop every few mo- 
ments to gather a flower, inhale the fragrance of 
some blossoming bush, and look off at the mountains 
lying far away. 

The top of the mountain, although somewhat less 
than five thousand feet in elevation, gives one a 
feeling of being very high above the earth. For the 
air is singularly stimulating, and the rocks are cov- 
ered with the growths of high places, among them 
"heather," as the people call the delightful little 
evergreen Dendrium buxifolium, and the hardwood 
trees through which the path leads are dwarfed and 



254 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

twisted, like trees that have had to battle with the 
elements for life. 

To go to the edge and look directly down requires 
a steady head and should be done with caution, for 
the rock is bare and polished, and but for a ledge 
where bushes grow, a ledge scarcely noticeable a 
short distance away, it resembles, as some one has 
said, a stupendous petrified waterfall. In some lights 
this appalling front gleams white as snow, which has 
given the mountain its name. The characteristic 
feature of the scenery from Whiteside is the up- 
springing cliffs of the nearer mountains, impressive 
walls that would be more terrible if those close to 
you were not wreathed in verdure, and the more dis- 
tant ones softened by the tender lights and the cloud 
mists that so often lie about them, although there 
are clear, hard days when the cliffs look savage 
enough. 

And there are times when Whiteside Mountain 
becomes the theatre of a scene so terrific that to wit- 
ness it is a landmark in one's life. It was on a cloud- 
less summer day that one walked along the top of 
Whiteside far enough to see the cliffs of the Devil's 
Court-House, as the turret-like northern end of the 
mountain is called. One remembers admiring the 
little cloud that suddenly appeared in the intense 
blue of the sky, and the merry massing of white 
clouds that came rolling sweetly up over the edge 
of the horizon. You started to descend because of 
them, but finally decided that they were going 
around. You did not know that no cloud ever goes 




THE DEVIL S COURT-HOUSE 



HIGHLANDS 255 

around Whiteside. A great bird dropped suddenly 
out of the sky with half-closed wings and disap- 
peared in a cleft of the rocks. There was something 
about the arrow-like descent of that bird into the 
mountain that made you feel uneasy and you hurried 
down, but before you got to the bench, the storm 
was muttering and clouds were boiling over the 
whole sky. 

It seemed better now to wait until the storm was 
over than to risk driving through the woods. What 
happened next is difficult to describe. When the 
storm struck, you found yourself holding your large 
black horse by the halter, the mountain woman who 
had brought you there clinging to the other horse. 
At each crash of thunder the frightened animals 
plunged and reared, but when the one you held came 
down, it laid its quivering nostrils against your 
cheek, as though begging forgiveness and imploring 
you to save it. The lightning seemed pouring out of 
the clouds as from some devil's caldron. At each 
deafening explosion it was seen darting in all direc- 
tions over the stony floor. Electrical fire fell about 
us like rain. The metal parts of the carriage were 
struck, strange electrical thrills coursed through our 
nerves. Rain fell in torrents icy cold, while an icy 
wind drove it against us in lines almost parallel to 
the earth, and threatened to sweep us over the cliff. 
It would have been dark almost as night but for the 
constant play of the pallid lightning. The face of the 
woman who, a little way off was clinging to her horse, 
was ghastly green in color; — "Are we dying?" 



256 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

she sobbed — it seemed we were, but you put on as 
hopeful a front as possible to help her. And then — 
the whole earth seemed shattered to pieces, the 
woman and her horse fell as though shot, and lights 
played about them on the rock. 

Heaven knows how long it lasted. It seemed 
hours. It vanished almost as suddenly as it came, 
and when the sun burst out we discovered we were 
yet alive, drenched to the skin, and our teeth chat- 
tering with cold and fright. The woman and her 
horse had struggled to their feet, she with legs so 
numb that she could scarcely stand and the horse 
quivering in every muscle. We managed to attach 
the:trembling animals to the carriage, which, though 
repeatedly struck, had not been destroyed, and get 
back to Highlands. It was weeks before one fully 
recovered from the effects of the adventure, and one 
wonders if the poor woman and the horse she held 
ever fully recovered. 

It was the worst electrical storm known for years, 
and why we chose that particular day to go to White- 
side with its Devil's Court-House who can say? 
For from the bench of Whiteside the native people, 
those who live in that region, flee in terror at the 
slightest sign of an approaching storm. It is a noted 
battle-ground. To stand in the midst of a conflict of 
the gods where lightning bolts are the weapons is an 
experience one would not dare to court, but having 
survived It, it becomes one of those great headlands 
in life the existence of which Is worth whatever may 
have been the cost of discovering them. 



HIGHLANDS 257 

It is the hardness of the massive granite in this 
region which has preserved the great upright cHffs 
through the ages, and because of the hard and pre- 
cipitous nature of the rocks, this part of the country- 
is gemmed with waterfalls, of which there are half a 
hundred within a few miles of Highlands, each one 
worth a visit. 

Characteristic of Highlands are the many roads 
that go from it as a centre, or, perhaps one should 
say, go towards it, for here all roads lead to High- 
lands, that is, all upward roads. Our favorite in by- 
gone days was perhaps the "Old Franklin Road," 
where the Nantahala lay so sweetly in the sky before 
us as we went. It was hard to get over the Old 
Franklin Road even then, and now it is probably all 
gone, the new road having taken its place. 

But whether one goes to Franklin by the old road 
or the new, there is to be seen that lovely line of the 
Nantahala towards which one's course is directed. 
In the picturesque Cullasagee Valley — "Sugar 
Fork" the people call it, rudely translating the soft 
Indian name — you leave the main road and go 
through the woods to the fall whose thunder pre- 
pares you for the headlong leap of the stream down 
nearly a hundred feet of vertical cliff. It is one of the 
noblest falls in the region, and when one went there, 
the way to it was made memorable as well by the 
ginseng seen blossoming in the woods. This myste- 
rious little plant, "sang" the people call it, whose 
roots are so potent to cure the Chinaman of all his 
ills, has been nearly exterminated because of the 



258 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

eager search the country people have made for it. 
They sold it at the stores, where one large root was 
worth a week's wages. This inconspicuous little 
plant, with its power of healing Oriental ills, belongs 
to that mysterious brotherhood of the two continents, 
appearing only in the eastern United States and 
eastern Asia. 

Returning from the fall and following down the 
clear Cullasagee, Franklin in time comes to view 
where it lies so prettily on the blood-red waters of the 
Little Tennessee, with the Nantahala rising, an 
exquisite background, behind it. And seeing it thus 
in the mystical light of the summer day one has 
again that vision of what the earth might be, and 
will be, when future generations are moved by the 
power of beauty that is finally to conquer the world. 

Seven or eight miles before reaching Franklin, one 
passes the noted Corundum Hill, at Cullasagee, the 
site of the mine where, besides other less attractive 
minerals, men are in eager search of the gems that 
lie hidden in the heart of the ancient rocks. 

Franklin, although it is the county seat, seemed 
at the ends of the earth to us travelers from the wild 
interior, and now one hears with dismay that the 
railroad has come to it up from Tallulah Falls in 
Georgia, which makes one tremble for the next news 
from Highlands. The railroad does very well in 
some places, but imagine a locomotive smoking and 
puffing and screaming up that romantic valley of the 
Cullasagee where log houses and spinning-wheels 
consoled the eye in former days! And imagine it 



HIGHLANDS 259 

bringing up at a smart station among the flaming 
azaleas of Highlands! 

From Franklin you can go out to climb the steep 
sides of the Nantahala, where the road winds up 
among gigantic trees — which, alas, may be all 
gone now — and on over the gap and down to the 
lower but very picturesque country beyond, where 
Standing Indian, the last and one of the highest 
summits of the Blue Ridge, looks calmly over the 
head of Chunky Gal Mountain crouching at his feet. 

Although the Nantahalas abound in beautiful 
flowers, they also have a reputation for the produc- 
tion of "ramps," as the people call the wild onions 
that are abundant enough in some regions to be a 
nuisance to the farmer. Cattle sometimes eat ramps 
and are poisoned, though it is said that, if they eat 
them in the spring before other greens sprout, they 
get used to them and can consume them without in- 
jury. Ramps are pretty notwithstanding their mal- 
odorous and other bad qualities, and "ramp coves," 
with the thousand other plants that fill them, are not 
as bad as the name implies. 

The Nantahala Range rises steeply to a narrow 
edge whose summits are five thousand feet or more 
high, and one discovers that it is this steepness, to- 
gether with the absence of near, high mountains, 
that gives the range its strong individual line against 
the sky. 

Another favorite road winds down through the 
forest from Highlands to Whiteside Cove, where one 
ought to stay awhile and become acquainted with 



260 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the appearance of grand old Whiteside from below, 
for from the many intersecting ridges and coves the 
great mountain with its Devil's Court-House appears 
to advantage. The country about Whiteside Cove is 
extremely wild, for it is on the eastern slope of the 
Blue Ridge and streams rush through it from all 
directions. And yet how can you call it wild with 
apple trees in bloom and that soft, Southern caress 
in the air! 

Beyond Whiteside Cove the road leads down to 
Cashier Valley and on to the "Sapphire Country," 
whose natural beauty man has enriched by the in- 
troduction of lakes into the landscape. Cashier Val- 
ley, with its open spaces, its cultivated farms, and 
its views of the surrounding mountains, has long 
been a favorite place of residence, and it was here 
that General Wade Hampton had his summer home. 



XXV 

THE SAPPHIRE COUNTRY 

THE romantic name of this region is said to have 
been given to it because of the prevaiHng color 
of the sky and the waters. There are moments here, 
as in all these mountains, when the celestial hues 
of the heavens seem to have diffused themselves 
through the tissues of air and earth, and we have 
about us a world which "Sapphire Country" well 
expresses. 

There are three large artificial lakes in the Sap- 
phire Country, Lake Fairfield, the upper one, occu- 
pying a beautiful little "cove" in the mountains at 
an elevation of about three thousand feet; Lake 
Sapphire, a short distance below it, longer, narrower, 
and more winding, lying in the enlarged bed of the 
Horse Pasture River; and Lake Toxaway, lying 
some ten or twelve miles to the east of the others, 
and some two hundred and fifty feet lower. Lake 
Toxaway is larger than either or perhaps both of the 
other lakes, having a shore-line of sixteen miles. 

These charming lakes, with their steep wooded 
banks here, their green and level shores there, the 
outreaching points of land, the mountains, clouds, 
and trees reflected in the water, the splendid rho- 
dodendron and laurel that in places crowd to the 
water's edge, give to the scenery something that to 



262 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

many seems essential to its perfection. The lakes 
have been finished long enough to have settled into 
the landscape like works of nature, so that to visit 
these sheets of water, that lie like jewels in their 
beautiful setting of trees and flowering shrubs, 
leads one to the reflection that man can make as 
fine a lake, on a small scale, as can the cosmic glacier, 
he following nature's method of clearing out the 
bottom — but with quick-working shovels of steel 
instead of the slow push of ice — and of damming 
up the exit with a symmetrical stone wall instead of 
an irregular haphazard moraine. 

The outlet of Lake Toxaway is Toxaway River, 
that, rising west of the Blue Ridge, breaks through 
that barrier — the only river, unless it may be the 
Linville, that does this — and joins the Horse Pas- 
ture part-way down the mountain. For the Horse 
Pasture, although so close to Toxaway River, rises 
on the western slopes of the Blue Ridge that makes 
several sudden curves in this region, the Sapphire 
and Fairfield lakes lying on its eastern slope, and 
Lake Toxaway west of it. To the east of Lake Tox- 
away the streams run to the French Broad Valley 
that begins just below here, and along which a road 
leads from Toxaway down to Brevard, lying so pleas- 
antly on its slopes just above the level river bottom. 

This upper part of the French Broad, although less 
impressive than where the river breaks through the 
mountains beyond Asheville, has a gracious beauty 
of its own, possessing that indefinable charm of 
level spaces below uprising hills. The French Broad, 



THE SAPPHIRE COUNTRY 263 

it is interesting to know, in the early history of the 
country lay on the boundary line between the Eng- 
lish and the French possessions, the French acquir- 
ing by treaty all the territory in this region drained 
by waters running to the Mississippi. Since there 
were several "Broad" rivers in the mountains, this 
one became the "French Broad," a name that it 
retains to this day. Up the French Broad Valley as 
far as Toxaway comes that branch of the railroad, 
from Hendersonville. So it will be seen that High- 
lands now lies between the terminals of two rail- 
roads, the joining of which one fears is only a matter 
of time. 

The largest and finest of the group of hotels that 
has sprung up at these lakes is at Toxaway, where 
the visitor will find all the amenities of modern hotel 
life. And now an electric car line is being projected 
from Toxaway to Fairfield, the first thread in that 
web of steel which the eye of prophecy sees woven 
over the mountains in the near future. 

The whole Sapphire Country is remarkable for its 
scenic beauty. The points of view to go to, the moun- 
tains to climb, the streams to fish, the waterfalls to 
visit, the forests to explore, afford inexhaustible 
entertainment to the nature-lover, to which has 
been added tennis, golf, boating and hunting for 
those who enjoy such sports; for the property of the 
hotel company, which includes some twenty-eight 
thousand acres, is mostly wild land where the forests, 
kept as game preserves, are full of deer and birds and 
the streams and lakes are well stocked with fish. 



264 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

Waterfalls are a characteristic of this country that 
lies so near the steep walls of the Blue Ridge. In 
whatever direction one may walk, ride, or drive, 
there are the waters leaping down, sometimes in deaf- 
ening volume, sometimes in exquisite veils, or white, 
winding threads, or ethereal fabrics woven of air, 
water, and light, sparkling and gay. Whatever form 
of waterfall one likes best can here be found, for 
these jewels of the landscape are everywhere strung 
on the silver streams that embroider the green robe 
of the Sapphire Country, — and along the water- 
courses and bordering the cascades the smaller rho- 
dodendrons, those the color of a blush rose, hang 
their exquisite flowers over the rocks. 

Among the roads that run in every direction is 
one up Toxaway Mountain, or Great Hogback, as it 
is called on the maps, on whose summit it is worth 
while to spend the night and see the sun rise over one 
of the finest panoramic views in this part of the 
world, there being no near heights to obstruct the 
outlook. But sometimes, instead of rising over a 
world of mountains, the sun shines across a level 
expanse of white cloud out of which as time goes on 
mountain-tops appear one after the other, phantas- 
mal islands in an unearthly sea. As the sun mounts, 
the ineffable abyss of mists, lights, and shadows 
changes and acquires substance, finally resolving 
into far-reaching mountains, green, blue, opaline — 
some of them free of clouds. Others with cloud 
banners floating over them, or soft cloud lakes 
cradled in their hollows. But sometimes the clouds 



THE SAPPHIRE COUNTRY 265 

lie higher and you wake up shivering to discover 
that these mists are beautiful only when wrapping 
up your friends below. 

One remembers with pleasure the sweet things 
that grow on Toxaway Mountain, fragrant white 
azaleas, tall, orange-red lilies, saxifrages, columbines, 
laurel, everything in its season, the flame-colored 
azaleas converting it into a blazing garden in their 
blooming time, while sweet-fern, suddenly discovered 
growing at your feet, sends your thought in a flash 
back to those New England pastures forever fra- 
grant in memory with the sweet-fern that clothes 
them. 

You will not be in the Sapphire Country long, 
nor anywhere in the higher mountains for that mat- 
ter, without hearing the magic word "corundum." 
Upon investigation corundum proves to be, on the 
surface, a useful but prosaic mineral which, because 
of its extreme hardness — it is next to the diamond 
in that — is made into emery wheels, sandpaper, and 
other abrasive instruments. But this is only one 
side of corundum. When you penetrate into its his- 
tory you find it the product of very old rocks, the 
oldest rocks on earth — which is interesting, but 
not vital to anybody but the geologist. But, and here 
corundum becomes not only of absorbing interest 
but positively dazzling, mysteriously connected with 
it, born from it like fancies from a poet's brain, are 
the most beautiful and precious gems in the world, 
gems surpassed in value by the diamond alone. 

When corundum crystalizes in an ecstasy of red, 



266 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

we have rubies, — true, or, as we say, Oriental 
rubies, — gems next to the diamond in value, or in 
their best form equal to it. When the crystals form 
in other moods, they shine forever as purple ame- 
thyst, or Oriental sapphire, or pink or white sap- 
phire, or they glow with the deep and thrilling green 
of the emerald, rarest of gems and equal in value to 
the ruby, or they emit the yellow light of the topaz. 
Corundum crystals take all the colors of the rain- 
bow, each gem named from its color, and all of them, 
no matter of what color, are known under the general 
name of sapphire crystals, or sapphires. Sapphire 
crystals of all colors are found in the North Carolina 
mountains, some predominating in one section, some 
in another. 

Corundum, the mother rock of the most precious 
gems, is found throughout the North Carolina 
mountains excepting in the extreme northern part, 
and there are several mines in the Sapphire Country, 
which is a famous corundum region, and these mines, 
although not worked primarily for gems, yield many 
fine ones, particularly blue sapphires, to which cir- 
cumstance some attribute the name of the region. 
It is a fortunate place that has more than one reason 
for deserving such a name. 

It is interesting to know that corundum mining 
which has grown to so important an industry here, 
began its history in a gem mine. This was at Corun- 
dum Hill, near Franklin, and the mine, which was 
opened in 1871, among other treasures yielded what 
is said to be the finest specimen of emerald green 



THE SAPPHIRE COUNTRY 267 

crystallized corundum in the world. It must not be 
supposed, however, that this remarkable crystal, 
measuring four and a half, by two, by one and a half 
inches, and which is now in the Morgan-Bement 
Collection in New York, is what we should call an 
"emerald." If that were so, we should have the 
most precious gem on the face of the earth. For a 
gem must be transparent, and while there are in this 
crystal transparent places from which gems could be 
cut, the crystal as a whole has not realized absolute 
transparency throughout, even a crystal reaching 
perfection only at rare intervals, which is why the 
great gems are so noted, so few, and so costly. When 
we buy a gem stone we are buying the highest ex- 
pression of inorganic life, the poetry of the rocks. 

The Cullasagee corundum mine began as a gem 
mine, but since the finest gems of the rocks, like the 
most inspired fancies of the poet, are few and far 
between, the mine in time became worked princi- 
pally for corundum, which, having been unable to 
crystallize into gems, was set to sharpening and 
polishing. Not that gems are no longer found in this 
mine: many a fine one appears, like an occasional 
inspiration, from the rocks which are now valued 
principally for their lower service of utility. 

But there are other gem mines in the mountains 
to-day, one of the most remarkable lying in the valley 
of Cowee Creek, whose waters enter the Little Ten- 
nessee only a few miles north of Franklin. Here are 
found true rubies, concerning which a government 
report on this region says: "In color and brilliancy 



268 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

they are equal to the Burmah ruby, and if the per- 
centage of the unfiawed, transparent material in- 
creases but little, this new field for the ruby would 
be a well-matched rival to the Burmah fields." 

This is very pleasant, the only thing lacking to 
make perfect the fascination of these flower-graced 
mountains being the discovery that the rocks be- 
neath are graced with Burmah rubies. Burmah, it is 
true, has not yet yielded up her sceptre to the proud 
corundum rocks of the New World, for years of un- 
fulfilled hopes have passed since that report was 
made. But one is comforted by the reflection of how 
short a time it is since any efforts have been made 
systematically to explore these rocks. 

Although the field of sapphire gems is so extensive, 
it must not be supposed that in the course of millen- 
niums the crystal flowers of these mountains have 
blossomed in corundum alone. If the ruby has re- 
mained but a dazzling hope, another source of gem 
stones has yielded a treasure which is not only very 
beautiful, but is abundant enough and occurs in 
large enough stones to make mining for it profitable. 
It is also peculiar to this region, an original product 
of the North Carolina mountains, which from some 
points of view is better even than duplicating a 
Burmah ruby. This new gem is found also in Cowee 
Creek and near the ruby deposits. It is a peculiar 
form of garnet and its name is rhodolite. It is re- 
markable for its transparency and great brilliancy, 
the color shining out with peculiar brightness in arti- 
ficial light. If you ask how it differs from the true 



THE SAPPHIRE COUNTRY 269 

ruby, the answer is that the finest sapphire gems 
have an intensity of color never equaled by any 
other stones, and the ruby is valued for this and its 
wonderful lustre, although other gems may surpass 
it in brilliancy. Rhodolite, like rhododendron, gets 
its beautiful name from the Greek word meaning 
rose, for it is the color of roses and rhododendrons. 

In the valley of the Cowee Creek these two lovely 
gems, the ruby and the rhodolite, have blossomed side 
by side in the rocks, each extracting from them what 
it needed to bring to expression the spirit of inorganic 
life, just as in the crumbling soil above them the 
roses and rhododendrons have blossomed each in its 
own rare colors to express the inner spirit of the 
plant. And who shall say that the same necessity, 
impelling the crystals through cycles of cosmic pres- 
sure to emerge in permanent forms of beauty, does 
not impel the flowers of the upper air to clothe them- 
selves in transitory loveliness? 

Other members of the garnet group besides rhodo- 
lite have been found in the North Carolina Moun- 
tains, but perhaps none other of important gem value, 
although immediately below the mountains Bohe- 
mian gem garnets, or Cape rubies, as they are also 
called, are found in abundance. But the garnet of 
the mountains exists as a rule in massive form, in 
places pure enough to be cut into wheels, — 
"emery wheels" made of garnet! 

In addition to the corundum or sapphire gems, and 
the one precious garnet stone, there is, in the moun- 
tains, a remarkable series of gem crystals found in the 



270 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

mica veins. For while mica may not itself create gems, 
there is in company with it, born as it were from the 
same mother, the group of beautiful crystals belong- 
ing to the beryl type and which are among the most 
valuable of the precious stones. Large sea-blue 
aquamarines, that for beauty of color have never 
been surpassed, and beryls, both sea-green and yel- 
low, than which none richer have ever been found, 
as well as clear green and blue stones, occur in differ- 
ent parts of the mountains in sufificient quantities to 
make mining for them profitable, although none 
have been found in the Sapphire Country where the 
beryl-bearing rocks are less prominent. 

The most important of the beryl mines thus far 
opened are in the Black Mountain Country, particu- 
larly near Spruce Pine, where mining operations have 
brought to light many lovely gems, notable among 
which are blue stones of large size and equal, we are 
told, to any from Brazil, with lesser numbers of fine 
aquamarine and honey-yellow gems. And the ber>'l- 
bearing rocks of North Carolina have, like the co- 
rundum rocks, given a new gem to the world, al- 
though it has not been found in the mountains. It is 
the beautiful new emerald known as hiddenite, 
which is being profitably mined at a place called 
Stony Point, in the foothills just below the moun- 
tains, and where some very valuable stones have 
been found. 

Mica, which occurs plentifully and of very fine 
quality in the North Carolina mountains, was 
mined there even in prehistoric times, as has re- 



THE Sx\PPHIRE COUNTRY 271 

cently been discovered, and it is from these mica 
mines that beryls were first obtained, the discovery 
of the sapphire gems coming later. No one can be 
in the mica mining regions of the mountains without 
noticing the glitter of the dry roads as well as the 
sparkling appearance of man and beast when these 
have traversed the highways, thereby becoming 
covered with "diamond dust." 

As well as the sapphire and beryl gems, the rocks 
of these fortunate mountains yield beautiful crystals 
of the cyanite group, closely related to topaz and 
named from a Greek word meaning blue, because of 
their prevailing color, the finest of these blue stones 
resembling Oriental sapphires. As to tourmalines, 
they seem to be awaiting their discoverer, only black 
ones of gem quality being generally found, although 
what one might call the haunts of the tourmaline are 
frequent enough. 

Very beautiful quartz crystals are abundant in 
different parts of the mountains, the finest gem of 
which is the purple amethyst, not the Oriental or 
sapphire amethyst, but still an exceedingly beauti- 
ful stone. A valuable mine of these gems was once 
brought to light in an unusual and romantic manner. 
This happened on Tessentee Creek that enters the 
Little Tennessee a few miles south of Franklin. Here 
a landslide exposed a large vein of crystalline quartz 
to a depth of twenty feet, and in the decomposed 
rocks of this vein amethysts were found in large 
quantities, there being many beautiful ones from 
half an inch to three inches long, both light and dark 



272 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

in color, the dark spots often of the deepest purple. 
These gems, thus offered open-handed by nature, 
were equal, it is said on authority, to those found in 
any country of the globe. 

Beautiful smoky and citron green quartz crystals 
abound in the Black Mountain region, and the 
choicest form of quartz, rock crystal, also occurs 
abundantly there, masses of several hundred pounds' 
weight having been found. From these have been 
cut many beautiful objects by the Tiffany lapidar- 
ies of New York, among them a crystal ball five 
inches in diameter. One mass of rock crystal was 
found encrusted with a green substance so that when 
polished it looked like moss under clear water. 

Aside from those gems, whose very names have so 
long exercised a spell over the human heart, there 
are found here many lovely crystals bearing un- 
familiar scientific names, but from which beautiful 
jewels can be cut; and while few of us will be fort- 
unate enough to find priceless stones in the crystal 
streams that sparkle under the laurel, or stumble 
upon a newly disclosed amethyst mine, any one with 
a fondness for crystals and a little knowledge of how 
to proceed can gather many a lovely, unfading flower 
of the rocks to recall the days of happy wandering 
over the oldest and most gracious mountains in the 
world. 

Besides the crystals there are many rare and beau- 
tiful minerals not only valuable to the collector, but 
available for purposes of art, among which quartz 
yields a lovely fawn and salmon-pink chalcedony, as 



THE SAPPHIRE COUNTRY 273 

well as agates, green chrysoprase, and red and yellow 
jasper. And there are choice building stones to be 
found almost everywhere, among them serpentine 
and beautiful marbles, in some places the marble 
being white and fine enough for the sculptor's chisel. 
So that one who should, like Kubla Khan, a stately 
pleasure dome decree, could find choice materials for 
its construction close at hand, with beautiful and 
rare stones to ornament the interior and even en- 
crust it with jewels — all from the rocks that other- 
wise adorn the earth with their covering of beautiful 
plant growths. 

And beyond the minerals that are beautiful, there 
are many that are curious or useful, among them 
asbestos, that seems so little like stone and which is 
here found of the finest quality; and there is pure 
talc from which our best toilet powders are made, 
and soapstone, a form of talc, and graphite, and the 
queer flexible sandstone, a bar of which bends when 
you lift it ; and kaolin is mined for the making of fine 
white china. Indeed, almost everything one can ask 
from the rocks — even to the newly valued "rare 
earths" — here await man's pleasure. 

Crystals and the other rare minerals from the 
North Carolina mountains are treasured in the 
greatest collections of the world, in this country very 
fine ones being on exhibition in the Metropolitan 
Museum of Art and the American Museum of Nat- 
ural History, both in New York, in the United 
States National Museum at Washington, in the 
Field Columbian Musuem at Chicago, as well as in 



274 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

many smaller museums and private collections, and 
they have been shown in the great expositions of the 
world, where we are told their absence would leave a 
vacancy that could not be filled. 

Hunting in these later days has been transferred 
almost entirely from the destruction of animals to 
the finer sport of finding and treasuring precious 
stones and rare or beautiful plants. The animals 
that once abounded here are practically gone. The 
crystals, hidden away in the recesses of the earth and 
affording more difficult hunting, are only beginning 
to be objects of general interest. But the plants 
have long attracted attention, and the beautiful 
Sapphire Country, with its sparkling waters, its 
crystal flowers of the rocks, and its glorious plant 
flowers, is the home of a beautiful little blossom 
which has the most romantic history of any flower in 
the mountains, it having been the quest for nearly 
half a century of every botanist who came hunting 
to this paradise for botanists. It is the Shortia galaci- 
folia, with a leaf closely resembling the galax, to 
whose botanical family it belongs, but which, instead 
of blossoming in a spike of small white flowers, bears 
a single large and beautiful white or pink blossom on 
a slender stem. The flowers, with their delicate wavy 
petals standing close together above the clustered 
leaves, are extremely beautiful, although it was not 
this beauty that at first excited interest in the plant 
that became an object of eager quest long before any 
one had so much as seen its flowers! 

It was more than a hundred years ago that the 



THE SAPPHIRE COUNTRY 275 

French botanist Michaux came to these mountains 
to explore the plant world, taking back to France 
many living specimens as well as a large herbarium. 
After him came other botanists, among them our 
own Asa Gray. In fact all botanists of note had first 
or last to come here, but it was a long time before all 
the wild flowers had been captured and named, if 
they are yet. Meantime, Dr. Gray being in Paris 
one day discovered in the collection of Michaux a 
little unnamed plant marked as having come from 
the high mountains of Carolina. The specimen was 
imperfect, consisting of only the leaves and one 
fruit — the leaves but not the fruit of the galax. 
This little nameless plant with its interesting peculi- 
arities became an object of vain search to Dr. Gray, 
but he finally ventured to describe it, and named it 
in honor of Professor Short of Kentucky, whereupon 
Shortia became an object of general quest. Mean- 
time Dr. Gray found a specimen almost identical 
with Shortia in a collection of Japanese plants, which 
of course greatly increased his desire to find it. But 
it was not until nearly a century after the specimen 
of Michaux had been gathered, and nearly half a 
century since the search for it began, that Shortia 
was really captured, not by Dr. Gray, but by Pro- 
fessor Sargent who was exploring the Sapphire 
Country so rich in beautiful growths. 

The strangest part of the story is that having been 
traced to its home at last, Shortia was found, on the 
Horse Pasture River a few miles south of where Lake 
Toxaway now lies, literally coloring acres of the 



276 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

earth with its charming flowers, and there any one 
so incHned will probably find it to-day, although it 
has been carried away by the wagon-load, not, how- 
ever, becoming thereby exterminated, as happens to 
so many of our wild flowers when the thoughtless 
visitor tears them rudely from the soil. For it was 
not the thoughtless visitor who removed Shortia, 
but skillful gardeners, who took it and cultivated it 
with the greatest care and sent it out to beautify the 
gardens of the people all over the world. 



XXVI 

THE FORKS OF THE PIGEON RIVER 

YOU ought to go to the Forks of the Pigeon, the 
coves are so thick up there, there is scarcely 
room for the mountains." Thus the people advise, 
and to the Forks of the Pigeon, if you are wise, you 
will go, not for the reason given so much as that up 
there you will find a new and very interesting coun- 
try to explore. Besides the coves there are Cold 
Mountain, Shining Rock, the redoubtable Sam 
Knob, and Pisgah itself, which is accessible from the 
East Fork. 

For you must know that the Big Pigeon River 
starts in the most remarkable cul-de-sac in the moun- 
tains, a cul-de-sac formed partly by Pisgah Range, 
which, sweeping down in a southwesterly direction, 
meets a line of high balds coming down from the 
northwest. These two mountains ranges form, as it 
were, the prongs of a mammoth pitchfork, whose 
handle is the Tennessee Ridge reaching down nearly 
to Toxaway Mountain. At the point where the han- 
dle joins the prongs, forming, as it were, a strong 
connective, is the beautiful Tennessee Bald, its sum- 
mit covered with blue-grass and white-clover. 

The cup-shaped space between the prongs of the 
pitchfork is occupied by the nearly circular Cold 
Mountain uplift, that, at Sam Knob, its highest 



278 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

point, riseb to an elevation a little over six thousand 
feet. The two Forks of the Pigeon almost surround 
Cold Mountain, receiving the waters that rush down 
its steep sides as well as those from the western 
slopes of PIsgah and the eastern slope of the line of 
balds. The two Forks come together at the north 
end of Cold Mountain just above the settlement of 
Garden Greek, forming the Big Pigeon, one of the 
wildest streams of the mountains, and that speeds 
along in a general northwesterly direction, finally to 
break through a gorge of the Great Smoky Moun- 
tains some miles south of where the French Broad 
makes its exit in gentler fashion, the Pigeon entering 
the French Broad when both rivers are well out of 
the mountains. 

Garden Creek, with its restful levels, its grain- 
fields and apple-orchards, and its fine outlooks to 
the western mountains, is a good place from which 
to explore the interesting country of the Forks. It 
is reached by driving up the valley of the Pigeon 
from Canton on the Murphy Branch. If Mr. Osborne 
is still at Garden Creek, he will tell you of the In- 
dian mounds he helped to open, as well as of many 
interesting things of the surrounding country. There 
is one mound at Garden Creek with an apple tree 
growing out of the top, but the greater number have 
been found, and opened, in the present Cherokee 
boundary, and in those larger valleys like that of the 
Valley River, where the more important Indian vil- 
lages stood. 

The contents of these mounds, principally bones, 



THE FORKS OF PIGEON RIVER 279 

pottery, and stone implements, which do not differ 
essentially from the contents of other Indian 
mounds, have been placed in various museums of 
the country, principally in that of the Valentine 
Museum at Richmond, Virginia. 

Henson Cove, under Sugar Top Mountain, is not 
one of the wild Fork coves, but being at Garden 
Creek you will often go there for the sake of the 
pleasant walk through the woods and past the little 
farms, where the catbird and the thrush sing to you 
along the way, and for the sake of the friendly peo- 
ple who live there. As you go along in the fresh 
morning, the air perfumed by the wild grapevine 
draping the tree above your head, the wild roses 
blossoming along the slopes, white azaleas on the 
edge of the woods, ripe strawberries hiding some- 
where near in the grass, as you go along, the warm 
summer sun drawing the fragrance out of all sweet 
things, you decide that there is no better walk than 
that to Henson Cove. 

One of the joys of the road is the complete recov- 
ery of one's senses. In the city you have no use for 
anything but eyes and ears, and not for the finer 
offices of those. But in the open — how many deli- 
cate sounds attest the unsuspected register of the 
ear ! Day by day you hear new cadences in the tree- 
tops, in the shrubs and the grasses. Voices, silent at 
first, grow audible, sometimes you almost hear the 
flowers sing. And the eye, recovering from the 
dust and glare of the streets, sees finer tones of color, 
detects delicate movements in the leaves and in the 



28o THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

clouds, your spirit is stunned by depths of black 
thunder abysses and exalted by the softly shining 
tints of the morning sky. 

And in the open you acquire a new sense. You 
learn to smell. The most sensitive and poetical of 
all our senses, in the cities becomes deadened from 
disuse. But one day, in the sweet, clean air of the 
mountains, one makes the charming discovery that 
one can smell! Perhaps, going along a lonely road, 
there comes a sudden waft of delicious fragrance — 
ah, strawberries! — where are they? There is no one 
to tell, but the fragrance is wafted to you again, a 
little more certainly, and so you go in the direction 
indicated; again it comes, but fainter; you turn and 
try again, and soon you are sure and go straight to 
the knoll beyond the fence where the ground is red 
with the ripe fruit. Sitting down and tasting a berry 
here and there, you detect a flavor that exists only 
for him who has smelled his way to the feast. With 
the tuning-up of the senses come pleasures unguessed 
in the grosser uses of these divine faculties. One 
sometimes hears music in the fall of water over a 
cliff, in the sweep of the wind through forest trees, 
in the mingling crashes of a thunderstorm, or smells 
harmonies in the flowers, or tastes rhythmic cadences 
in a wild berry. 

And then at the spring of icy water you quench 
your thirst with something of the same elation you 
felt in the flavor of the strawberries, for did you not 
trace your way to this spring by reasoning out where 
it ought to be, and then finding the path that led 



THE FORKS OF PIGEON RIVER 281 

straight to It? To what better use could one put the 
attribute of reason? 

With what pleasure one remembers those walks to 
Henson Cove, with Its friendly people and Its pictur- 
esque houses, In which still linger Interesting old 
customs, old counterpanes, and old looms. Is Me- 
lissa Meese still weaving In Henson Cove? Can one 
still see charming coverlets In the home of Mrs. 
Nancy Blaylock? Who was It told us that "when a 
few funerals are made In this country the old weav- 
ers are all gone"? Is that picturesque cabin yet 
standing under Pizen Cove Top? And do they still 
have to guard against the "mllk-sick" over there In 
Pizen Cove? 

It was In this region that one first saw a "milk- 
sick pen," and heard of the curious sickness which, 
attacking cattle that eat grass or leaves In certain 
well-defined spots, through the milk poisons the 
people, sometimes fatally. What causes this strange 
illness no one seems to know, the vegetation In these 
places being the same as elsewhere; but what the 
people do know is just where these poisonous spots 
are, so that when you see a little space fenced off 
anywhere in the mountains for no apparent reason, 
you will generally be right In concluding it to be a 
"milk-sick" spot. 

Dutch Cove, also under Sugar Top, but separated 
from Henson Cove by a pathless ridge. Is considera- 
bly farther from Garden Creek, from which It Is 
reached by a trail over the mountains. Larger and 
more thickly settled than Henson Cove, it has a road 



282 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS^ 

leading out towards the railroad, that is to say, it is 
connected with the world. Its name betrays its 
origin, and you hear of old Dutch Bibles in the Cove, 
although you do not succeed in finding any. The 
people of the more secluded Henson Cove consider 
Dutch Cove altogether too thickly settled, one of 
them assuring you, as proof of the degeneracy of the 
rival settlement, that you could stand in her cousin's 
door in Dutch Cove of a morning and hear nine 
coffee-mills going at once. 

You can walk to Henson and Dutch Coves, but 
when you go up either of the Forks of the Pigeon you 
will get up "soon" in the morning, and you will not 
go afoot, for the fords of the forks are not to be trifled 
with. There are not even foot-logs to cause the 
timid to tremble, for the Forks of the Pigeon are 
master-hands at " getting up "and tearing to pieces 
everything they can reach. If one remembers 
rightly there are about twenty-six fords within six 
or seven miles up the East Fork, — which is as far 
as the road goes, — and heaven knows how many up 
the West Fork. 

To explore the West Fork you cross the main river 
just below the Forks, that is to say, you cross it if 
the river is down. If it is up, you stay at home. Hav- 
ing crossed, — how innocent the stream seems! — 
you are surprised to find the valley of the West Fork 
very much like that of Garden Creek. Fertile acres 
lie about you, elderberries bloom in the fence corn- 
ers, blossoming chinkapins hang over the roadside, 
the smell of warm, ripe strawberries lurking some- 



THE FORKS OF PIGEON RIVER 283 

where near in the grass makes your sympathetic 
mouth water, while the roadside is gay with the pale 
leaflets and large bright-yellow, pea-shaped flowers 
of the Alleghany thermopsis. Green meadows where 
the cattle graze, orchards, thrifty-looking farm- 
houses, blue mountains showing in the distance — 
the West Fork does not seem so very wild. 

Then you enter a ravine under shady trees. The 
road crosses and recrosses the stream over fords that 
are deep and full of rocks. The horse at times seems 
about to disappear permanently. The water runs 
over the sides of the wagon-box as the wheels sink in 
a hole on one side or mount a rock on the other. That 
you will be precipitated into the laughing waters of 
the West Fork seems inevitable. But then the 
kalmia clusters thickly at the water's edge, and a 
bird is singing in a tree-top. 

At the narrowest places you meet loaded tanbark 
wagons, or a long line of oxen moving slowly forward 
with a load of lumber that looks absurdly small until 
you think of the state of the road, when the wonder 
is that they can move it at all. Where the river forks, 
one branch of it — there are no "prongs" to the 
streams here — goes to the right, the other to the 
left of Fork Mountain, a spur of Cold Mountain 
that lies between the two nearly parallel arms of the 
stream. The left-hand or Little East Fork lies at 
the bottom of a long narrow "cove" so tightly 
squeezed in between the sides of Cold Mountain and 
the wild Fork Mountain that road and river continu- 
ally become one. And here on either side are the 



284 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

promised "coves" running up into the mountains, 
close together, one after the other, choked full of 
laurel and rhododendron, grown with forest trees, 
and each contributing a wild little stream to swell 
the waters of the Little East Fork. No wonder peo- 
ple stay at home in this part of the country when 
the waters are up! 

At the end of the road you come, not to a lumber- 
camp, but to a house with a clearing where the occu- 
pants apparently have lived for generations. The 
people here are glad to see you. A visitor up the 
Little East Fork is no everyday occurrence, and 
presently they are telling you all about themselves, 
their neighbors, and the surrounding mountains. 

Shining Rock, the southern end of Cold Moun- 
tain, and over six thousand feet high, is just above 
your head, with a trail only four miles long up to it 
over the Scape Cat Ridge. Scape Cat has no name on 
the maps, being one of those countless ridges which 
are waiting for some one to come and, discovering 
how beautiful it can be made, occupy it and name it 
according to his fancy. In this way, let us hope, will 
be preserved some of the beautiful Indian names, 
the liquid sounds of which harmonize so well with 
the character of the landscape. For no matter how 
wild this mountain country, how inaccessible and 
rough, it is at the same time exquisite in the soft 
lights, with the all-pervading fragrances and the 
enchanting growths. Even the Little East Fork, 
now one sees it, is found to be lovable. Scape Cat 
owes its present name to the fact that "old man 



THE FORKS OF PIGEON RIVER 285 

Campbell" went up there with a boy hunting for 
stock, and while they were off, some one stole their 
rations. Next day Campbell hid them and said to his 
boy, "Well, Andy, we'll 'scape them cats to-night." 
Old Sally Reese took the rations, everybody knew, 
and the ridge from that day was named, in her 
honor, "Scape Cat." 

In all this region turkeys, domestic as well as wild, 
are common, and a "gang of turkeys" is about as 
ordinary a sight as a gang of chickens, but we were 
not prepared way up here on the Little East Fork 
of the Pigeon River to behold a gang of peacocks. 
When we admired them with a sort of anticipatory 
pleasure in the time to come, when peacocks will 
sun themselves on the walls in the charming gar- 
dens that charming people will make here, we were 
brought violently to earth by learning that the real 
value of the peacock is in its superiority to chicken 
meat. Peacocks, you learn, provide the finest dish 
you ever ate — and their tongues are not even men- 
tioned. 

If you want to climb to Shining Rock, you will 
find a trail going up from here, and at the top one of 
those balds so common to these mountains, and 
always so delightful. The top of Shining Rock 
Mountain is so level that we were told that men and 
women had been seen running footraces all over it. 
There are small firs here and there, and splendid 
groups of Rhododendron Catawhiense whose royal red 
flowers must transform Shining Rock into a garden 
of delight at their blooming season. Also huckle- 



286 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

berries grow up here in the greatest profusion, your 
new friend of the Little East Fork informing you 
that she would not mind climbing up to Shining 
Rock and picking and bringing home half a bushel 
of huckleberries any day. 

Shining Rock is named from the remarkable mass 
of white quartz, more than an eighth of a mile long 
and from thirty to sixty feet thick, that lies along 
the crest of the mountain and which is a conspicu- 
ous landmark for miles around. From Shining Rock 
one looks across to the Richland Balsam, Licks tone 
Bald, and a dozen other high bald mountains, while 
on the opposite side rise the summits of Pisgah 
Ridge. Indeed, the short Cold Mountain Ridge 
stands separated by deep valleys from a circle of 
high mountains that completely surround it. Its 
southernmost and highest point, Sam Knob, almost 
separated from the main ridge and rising without 
spurs in wild precipices to an altitude of over six 
thousand feet, is such a labyrinth of cliffs, gorges, 
and impenetrable laurel and rhododendron thickets 
that the mountain cannot be approached from any 
side. It is considered inaccessible even by the hardy 
mountaineer, so that when a hunted bear reaches 
Sam Knob he is not pursued. The hunters consider 
him at home. There are not many bears left in the 
mountains, though each year records a number of 
captures in different parts of the wilderness. That 
Bruin was once common, however, is shown by the 
frequency with which his name occurs in the Bear 
Wallows, Bear Creeks, Bear Pens, and Bear Ridges 



\ 

THE FORKS OF PIGEON RIVER 287 

throughout the mountains. All this region was noted 
for big game until very recent years. But now the 
lumbermen, before whose advance all life perishes, 
have found their way even into the coves of the 
Forks of the Pigeon. 

The road up the East Fork, closely following, con- 
stantly crossing and recrossing the river, is, like the 
way up the West Fork, delightful on a summer day. 
Each ford is a picture, no matter how the crossing 
of it may affect your feelings. From Cruso, near the 
end of the road, the trail to the top of Cold Mountain 
is a trail up into the sky, where tall forest trees 
gradually lower their heads and finally disappear to 
be replaced by small firs and great gardens of the red- 
flowering Rhododendron Catawbiense, the glorious 
shrub that so loves to blossom high up under the 
dome of the sky. The trail leads at first up Cold 
Creek, under the chestnuts, oaks, locusts, and tulip 
trees; then under rocky ledges and along such nar- 
row crests that you look down on either hand into 
deep-lying coves filled with trees and wonderful in 
their intensity of lights and shades. The sun smites 
hot as it strikes you on one side, while a cold north 
wind strikes you on the other side. 

The walk up this trail was made forever memor- 
able by the fear your guide entertained of snakes. 
He was accompanied by his little son whom he 
constantly cautioned to be careful. Neither himself 
nor any of his friends or neighbors had been "snake- 
bit," yet every step of the way through the laurel 
was beset with unseen dangers, and from every ledge, 



288 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

close under which we had to pass, a snake was ex- 
pected to precipitate itself upon us, and every time 
we had to grasp the rock to help ourselves over a 
difficult place we were in danger of grasping also a 
snake, while from him walking on ahead floated 
back a monologue in a minor key whose subject was 
ever the same, and of which we caught such frag- 
ments as this, " Be mighty careful now, look where 
you step! I'd rather give a thousand dollars than 
get you snake-bit up here." And so we continued 
our fearful way up the shining slopes and over the 
rocky ridges of Cold Mountain on a bright summer 
day. 

That there are snakes, the names of the many 
Rattlesnake Ridges, Dens, Knobs, and Mountains, 
stand as evidence, and that there are certain dry, 
rocky places frequented by these reptiles, there is 
no doubt, certain parts of Cold Mountain, we were 
told, being infested with them ; yet few people have 
been bitten, as the rattlesnake never acts on the 
offensive, but tries to escape unless cornered or 
frightened, and it does not strike without giving 
warning. 

Having wandered over these mountains at short 
intervals for more than a dozen years, and never 
having seen a living rattlesnake and but very few 
dead ones, one seldom thinks of them. The only 
precaution necessary is to be careful about going 
into huckleberry bushes or other thickets where the 
growth is so close that you cannot see the ground. 
No one can blame a snake for striking if it is stepped 



THE FORKS OF PIGEON RIVER 289 

on, also when pursuing Rattlesnake Knobs, or 
Branches, or Ridges, or Dens, one may as well look 
first and give plenty of notice of his approach. But 
as a rule one does not go to such places. The people 
know where they are and carefully avoid them, one 
man who had killed many rattlesnakes summing 
up the sentiment of the mountains when he said, "I 
am not afeard of a knife, or a gun, or a varmint, but 
I am afeard of a snake." 

The top of Cold Mountain, to which cattle and 
sheep are driven for the summer, is an extensive 
pasture of blue-grass and white-clover, where a large 
spring of water, cold and delicious, wells forth. To 
spend a summer day roaming about one of these 
high balds is a pleasure one cannot repeat too often. 
In the splendid exhilaration of the air, which is not 
thin enough to be oppressive, and through the cold 
tissues of which the sun sends a delicious flood of 
warmth, the body seems taken up and rejuvenated. 
And where else is the sky so luminous, the clouds so 
purely white? From one point and another you look 
out over a world of mountains many of which are 
well-loved and familiar friends. The most beautiful 
wild flowers have arranged themselves in gardens to 
please you, and out of the rocks leap sparkling wa- 
ters still more to refresh you. From the Forks of the 
Pigeon how many of these charming balds can be 
ascended by trails known only to the kindly natives, 
who will go with you if necessary or tell you the way 
where it is possible for you to go alone ! 



XXVII 

PISGAH AND THE BALSAMS 

PISGAH, lying between Toxaway and Ashevllle, 
is the most noticeable and the favorite moun- 
tain seen from Asheville. Everybody knows it. 
Rising, as It does, above the other heights. Its beau- 
tiful form outlined against the sky, it inspires a feel- 
ing of affection In those who see it day after day. It 
is the highest point in the Pisgah and Tennessee 
ridges, that long mountain barrier winding in a 
southwesterly direction from Beaverdam Creek, a 
few miles from Asheville, to Toxaway Mountain, 
a distance of some twenty-five or thirty miles. There 
is said to be a trail along the whole length of this 
crest, a sky walk to be envied the mortal who can 
take it. 

It does not detract from the interest one feels in 
Pisgah to know that It has retained its height above 
other mountains of the region because its rocks are 
crystalline, — that, in short, Pisgah Is high and 
strong because it is largely composed of garnets, of 
garnets and cyanite, the latter one will remember 
being very closely related to topaz. 

At Garden Creek, Pisgah often comes to view in 
your walks, and from Cruso, near where the trail 
goes up Cold Mountain, there is a road up Pisgah, 
that portion of the mountain now being Included in 



PISGAH AND THE BALSAMS 291 

the forest attached to the Biltmore estate. There is 
also an automobile road from Biltmore to Pisgah, 
a forecast, no doubt, of what will be true of many a 
high place in the near future. 

There is no sweeter road anywhere than that up 
Pisgah. In the coves and clearings at the foot of the 
mountain the people live in the homes of their fore- 
fathers and give you a welcome that is more than 
cordial if you choose to rest awhile on their porch, or 
drink from their spring, and they will urge you to 
stay to dinner so heartily, that only the thought of 
finding some wind-swept, sun-bathed slope, where 
you can sit in the open air and look off over the dis- 
tant mountains while you eat the luncheon provided 
at your last stopping-place, prevents you from ac- 
cepting. Lying on the ground to rest and maybe 
sleep a little in the deep stillness of nature, you think 
with sympathy of the woman living far back in a 
certain cove from which she never emerged, and 
who in reply to a question, answered, "No, I don't 
want to go away. I ain't a lonely-natured person 
noway. I like a quiet life." 

The road follows up Pisgah Creek, which, after 
the fashion of streams here, winds back and forth, 
so that for more than two dozen times you have to 
cross the swift water on those marvelous footways 
the people find sufficient for their own use, but whose 
vagaries present difficulties to the stranger. 

What you get from a mountain road depends 
upon how you go. If alone, you hear and see and feel 
things that you never hear or see or feel with even 



292 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the most considerate and sympathetic comrade. 
Your comrade you need for the halt at the end of 
the day. But you should also often walk alone. 
And whether alone or companioned, you must never 
walk right on. You must linger along and listen 
attentively, and sniff the air for news, and you must 
look, not only at the clouds and the blue of the sky, 
at the distant landscape and the colors on the near 
slopes, but you must look at the ground. For there 
also you will get things to remember when the doors 
are shut on the wander-life. You will be able to 
recall, for instance, that brown slope where in the 
early summer you suddenly became aware of a round 
bright eye shining out near the ground close to a log. 
As you continue to look, a striped and speckled form 
becomes outlined among the fallen leaves, the sticks 
and the stones. Ah, yes! — a ruffed grouse, but why 
so still? Why did it not escape at your approach? 
You look attentively at the ground close about you 
— nothing — yes, — there so close to your foot 
that another step would have crushed out its little 
life is a round brown puffball with a stripe down its 
back, and close to it another, and another and an- 
other, until you have detached five new birdlings 
from the protective coloring of the ground. There 
are more, you know, but do your best you cannot 
find them. So you pick up the two nearest you, one 
after the other, and lay them in the palm of your 
hand. They show no sign of life excepting the shin- 
ing wide-open eyes. They are just hatched, yet here 
they are, the accomplished young frauds, exercising 



PISGAH AND THE BALSAMS 293 

the most practiced deceit, no doubt secure in their 
faith that you cannot see them, although you have 
them in your hand. You hold them thus only a mo- 
ment, your pleasure in the contact clouded by 
thought of the suffering of that motionless little 
mother under the log. Yielding to a whimsical im- 
pulse, you place a light kiss on the top of each little 
head, then lay them on the ground side by side, 
and retreat backwards at some distance, and watch 
to see them go. But they do not go. You stand 
with your eyes on that one spot until they ache, 
and then in a moment of forgetfulness you look off 
to the blue mountains beyond. But only for a mo- 
ment, a little sound like a quick sigh brings you 
quickly back to business. You focus your eyes on 
the spot — it is vacant ! You know it is the spot, 
for you carefully marked it in your mind ; the stone 
is there — but they are not. Neither is that bright 
eye any longer visible under the log. They fooled 
you, after all. Not the slightest sound, the least mo- 
tion that could attract attention, and they have van- 
ished very much like a dream. They have fooled 
you? They think so, but it is really the other way, 
for see, those two you held in your hand did not 
really escape — you have them yet, and they have 
never been able to grow up or change since that 
day. Two little downy birds, like happy dreams, 
must run about the pleasant aisles of Pisgah forest 
to all eternity with a kiss hovering like a butter- 
fly above each little head. 
The ruffed grouse, "pheasant," the people call it, 



294 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

is native to these woods and an encounter with one 
is always a surprise, and nearly always pleasant, 
though you once got a shock from a grouse that 
must pretty nearly have balanced the bird's own 
distress of mind. It happened on a long, steep moun- 
tain path one spring day. Going along thinking of 
anything but danger, you suddenly stop as you hear 
the sharp hiss of a snake. You stand perfectly still 
and search the ground with your eyes. You see 
nothing, and all is silent until you move, when again 
comes that terrible danger signal. You begin to feel 
shaky at thought of the near invisible reptile, no 
doubt coiled ready to strike, when something moves 
from over a fallen log and your startled eyes behold a 
long thin thing stretching towards you. But to your 
infinite relief and amusement the snake's head re- 
solves into that of a ruffed grouse, and presently 
there fairly boils up over the log such a mass of irate 
feathers all on end, and outspread wings and tail, so 
crazy looking an object,with open mouth and hissing 
tongue, that you take the sufficiently obvious hint 
that your presence is not desired, and pretending 
all the fear the bunch of feathers thinks it is inspir- 
ing, you beat a hasty retreat, it after you, swelling, 
hissing, and triumphant. But you escape, and it no 
doubt goes back to its nest all self-complacency and 
with a fine tale to tell those children, as soon as they 
shall be hatched, of how it saved their lives one day 
and drove away a terrible human monster. Yet you 
wish it could someway know how that monster loved 
it and only ran away to please it. 



PISGAH AND THE BALSAMS 295 

Thinking of the many pleasant encounters you 
have had in bygone days with the woodland folk, 
and keeping eyes and ears alert for more, you follow 
up the winding way until you reach the bench of the 
mountain where Buck Spring, one of the famous 
springs of the mountains, gushes forth large, free- 
flowing, and icy cold. Near it now stands Mr. Van- 
derbilt's Buckspring Lodge on the edge of the bluff 
that looks off across the French Broad Valley to the 
Blue Ridge at the east and towards Asheville and 
its background of mountains at the north. The 
waters from Pisgah flow into the Pigeon River on 
one side, but into the French Broad on the other, 
and directly under the steep cliffs upon the top of 
which the lodge stands is that charming, far-famed 
level of the Blue Ridge plateau known as the "Pink 
Beds," because of the gorgeous garden of flowers it 
becomes in the springtime. 

There is every variety of surface on Pisgah, from 
dense forest growths to open treeless slopes, bushy 
benches, and rocky cliffs — and everywhere a be- 
wildering variety of flowers. On each mountain you 
find characteristic flowers, as though each kept its 
own garden somewhat distinct from its neighbors. 
Not that you will not find these flowers elsewhere, 
but perhaps nowhere else the same species In equal 
abundance. And each mountain you remember 
because of some great floral outburst In process at 
the time of your visit, so that when you think of 
Pisgah, for instance, it Is covered with the later sum- 
mer flowers, — gardens of pink and white turtle-head. 



296 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

asters, goldenrod, dozens of well-loved flower forms 
in luxuriance abound, as well as some you do not 
know, — instead of with a cloak of flaming azaleas, 
or wearing a crown of rose-bay, as would have been 
the case had your first visit been earlier In the season. 

From the top of Pisgah you get a wide view, and a 
very beautiful one, though perhaps the best Is that 
plunge of the senses down among the rhododendrons, 
kalmias, and tree-tops that cover all the near slopes 
with a lovely surface of green, in which deep shadows 
lurk, and over which the light plays so beautifully. 

To the west from Pisgah, across the cul-de-sac in 
which lie the Forks of the Pigeon and the high form 
of Cold Mountain, rise the Balsam Mountains, and 
from Garden Creek, that lies about halfway between 
Pisgah and the Balsams, a road leads through Davis 
Gap and on to Waynesvllle at the very foot of the 
Balsam Mountains. As one follows this winding 
road, beautiful views of Pisgah come and go, as also 
of Cold Mountain, Sam Knob, Lickstone Bald, and 
other familiar forms. 

Then, upon crossing the Davis Gap, the glorious 
high Balsams rise up to view. The road passes a 
picturesque old mill with its tall wheel, where one 
stops to drink from the cold spring, and soon after 
reaches Waynesvllle, which has long been a noted 
summer resort because of its elevation of over twen- 
ty-six hundred feet, its beautiful outlooks, and the 
fact that it lies on the railroad. 

Waynesvllle is not on the Pigeon River, but in the 
fertile and charming valley of Richland Creek which 



PISGAH AND THE BALSAMS 297 

enters the Pigeon a little to the north of here. The 
village lies, as it were, in a nest of the Balsam Moun- 
tains, which rise so close about it that one cannot see 
them to advantage, but from various points in the 
village one can look out towards the Newfound 
Mountains where the fine large mass of the Crab- 
tree Bald immediately attracts the eye. Crabtree 
Mountain ! — and below it and running half around 
it Crabtree Creek — what a picture rises before the 
imagination at those two names ! For the wild crab 
is one of the most precious gems of the forest. In the 
spring it blossoms, the first you know of this being 
the exquisite fragrance that pervades the woods. If, 
then, you go abroad you will find the wild orchards 
loaded with flowers like apple-blossoms, excepting 
that they are old-rose in color, delicately shaded 
with clear pink and white. No tree is more wonder- 
ful in appearance, and none is so wonderful in fra- 
grance. The perfume, powerful yet delicate and 
very refreshing, rises in a vast cloud of incense from 
the fire of the flowers until the whole forest seems 
steeped in it. And if you choose to press a few of 
these ardent blossoms between the leaves of a book, 
or drop them among your papers or your clothes, 
you will have reason to remember the ecstatic 
blooming of the crab tree for a very long time. 

The wild crab is not the only apple found in this 
fortunate land, for the orchards of Waynesville and 
the country roundabout yield apples that would not 
discredit the proud apple states of the North. In- 
deed, when we of Traumfest get a particularly good 



298 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

apple the question some of us ask is, "Did it come 
from Waynesville or New York?" 

There is a white sulphur spring near Waynesville, 
but that which most powerfully attracts the visitor 
is its nearness to the Balsams, into whose recesses 
one can penetrate by paths and trails to the very 
haunts of the bear, only that poor Bruin has been so 
driven from pillar to post that he has very few 
haunts left. The Balsams are among the highest 
remaining of these once towering mountains, and 
they, like Pisgah, owe their preservation to the 
cyanite and garnet in their rocks. 

The Balsams, as well as the Blacks, are named 
from the mantle of balsam firs that covers all their 
higher parts, so dark-green as to look black at times, 
although in the distance the magic light causes them 
to assume that wonderful blue color which is the 
prerogative of all these delectable heights. Balsam 
trees as a rule cover the higher slopes of all the 
mountains that rise above fifty-five hundred feet, 
sometimes on the highest ones running down the 
ravines much lower than that. These wide black 
mantles laid over the shoulders of the high moun- 
tains give strength to the landscape. As seen from 
below, they seem completely to envelop the moun- 
tains, but at a higher elevation, or upon approaching 
the summits, one discovers that the mountain-top 
is always treeless. This is true of the higher moun- 
tains, whether they are fir-clad or not, the "bald" 
varying in size from a few yards across on some 
mountains to rolling meadows hundreds of acres in 



PISGAH AND THE BALSAMS 299 

extent on others. The large balds, such as that of 
the Roan, the Big Yellow, and other well-known 
forms, also give character and added beauty to the 
landscape, in which they appear like peaceful islands 
in the billowing sea of tree-clad mountains. 

There is a road leading out of Waynesville and up 
to what is known as the Eagle's Nest, on one of the 
Junaluska spurs of the Balsam Mountains. This 
road, which is brown in color instead of red, winds 
up through a forest of hardwood trees, and towards 
the top there opens out a wide, gently concave mea- 
dow of mingled blue-grass and white-clover, one of 
those beautiful natural meadows that occur so fre- 
quently on the slopes of the higher mountains, and 
where the fragrance of white-clover mingling sud- 
denly with the manifold sweet odors of the forest 
gives one a sensation of waking into the past inter- 
penetrated with the events of the present. 

There is a hotel at the top near a large spring of 
cold water that wells forth close to a fine outlook, as 
though nature had planned it that way on purpose. 
There, before your eyes, Pisgah, Cold Mountain, 
Shining Rock, Lickstone, and the other balds we 
know so well, stand amidst the lesser mountains; 
and that far blue line to the southwest between 
nearer heights they tell us is Cullowhee Mountain. 
But that which most strongly affects one here is the 
colors of the balsams that are close enough for you 
to look into the deep, soft hollows that lie on the 
wonderful green of the slopes like lakes of midnight 
blackness. 



300 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

Not far from the Eagle's Nest Is another outlook, 
to the north this time, whence you get a glimpse of 
the Smokies, and can look off to Craggy and Mount 
Mitchell, while down at your feet lies the picturesque 
little valley of Jonathan's Creek; but here, too, the 
eye turns ever to the massive form of one of the 
near Balsam Mountains, big Cataluchee, with its 
wonderful deep colors. 

Walking over a beautiful natural meadow to get a 
full view of Plott's Balsams, you encounter such 
diversions as red columbine, gardens of pink turtle- 
head, fragrant and charming evening primroses, 
fire-pinks, phlox, lilies, and — sourwood, with its 
incomparable fragrance. The Plott Balsams that 
run southwest from here in a short and massive 
range are named from a family early inhabiting this 
region and among whom were several noted hunters. 
The grandfather of the present generation, some of 
whom still live up the wild and picturesque Plott 
Creek, killed a panther where the hotel now stands; 
but a hunter's fame here rested on the number of 
bearskins he could show, to hunt these dangerous 
animals with the primitive weapons of early days 
being well considered the true test of a man's cour- 
age. But though dangerous when brought to bay, 
the brown bears of the mountains are quite harmless 
if let alone. "There has n't a bear In this country 
hurt a man In my memory, or my father's or my 
grandfather's," an elderly man assures you; and a 
hunter then present adds, "A bear ain't goin' to 
hurt a man noway unless he's hemmed, then he'll 



PISGAH AND THE BALSAMS 301 

kill you." There are many bear stories yet told, 
though the most famous of the old hunters are no 
longer here to tell them. The railway train, thunder- 
ing under the very walls of the Balsams and climbing 
across them through the high Balsam Gap, bespeaks 
a new era when people come in throngs to the 
mountains for other purposes than bear-hunting. 



XXVIII 

MOUNT MITCHELL 

FROM the top of Tryon Mountain on a fair 
spring day, a snow-white cloud was seen lying 
above the northern horizon. It was so beautiful in 
the pure blue of the sky that the eye involuntarily 
turned to it again and again ; and then, some trick 
of the light revealed an opalescent world below, and 
all at once one realized that the cloud was the snow- 
covered crest of the Black Mountains, which can be 
seen from Tryon Peak on a clear day. 

After this one saw the Black Mountains in the 
distance, like the Smokies ethereally blue or again 
pearly white. But unlike the impression created by 
the Smokies, this of the Blacks vanished upon near 
acquaintance, perhaps in part because the name 
stamped another vision on the mind. It is hard to 
escape the influence of a name, and the Black Moun- 
tains live in your memory as a group of night-black 
domes topping a long black mountain crest that 
lightens to varied shades of green as it descends 
towards the valleys, or else loses itself below in depths 
of blue shadows, which is the way it appears when 
one is near it. 

Nowhere is the rounded contour of the Southern 
mountains so striking as in the high balsam-covered 
summits. Mitchell's High Peak, as it is now called, 



MOUNT MITCHELL 303 

used to be the Black Dome, a name poetical and pro- 
foundly descriptive. When near enough, perhaps 
on some neighboring slope or summit, the balsam- 
covered mountains are impressive to solemnity. 
The dark, unbroken mantle of fir trees covering all 
heights and hollows throws back the light with 
singular depth and softness, the color varying from 
deepest green to inky black, in which lie intense 
indigo shadows. 

The range of the Black Mountains, which is only 
fifteen miles in length, has, it will be remembered, 
thirteen summits above six thousand feet high. 
This short, high range, standing on a base less than 
five miles wide, its slopes sweeping up from either 
side to the crests more than three thousand feet 
above the surrounding valley bottoms, is, wherever 
visible, the most notable feature in the landscape. 

It runs north and south, its southern extremity 
merging Into the Blue Ridge, which here, in its very 
irregular windings, comes so close to the Black 
Mountains as to leave only a narrow and deep val- 
ley, that of the South Toe River, between. Two 
of the highest points of the Blue Ridge, Graybeard 
and the Pinnacle, noted landmarks, lie close to the 
Blacks. 

To the southwest of the Black Mountains, practi- 
cally a continuation of them, lies the short high 
chain of the Great Craggy Mountains In which 
Craggy Dome and Bullhead Mountain rise, in the 
one case a little above six thousand feet. In the other, 
a little below. To the west of the Black Mountain 



304 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

Range, tightly inclosing the narrow Cane River 
Valley, is a jumble of wild mountains, among which 
Yeates Knob reaches an elevation of six thousand 
feet, while to the north of the range lies the valley 
of Little Crabtree Creek between the Blacks and the 
rugged mountains beyond. Hence the valleys that 
nearly surround the Black Mountains are deep and 
narrow, and the streams rushing through them are 
very swift, clear, and, from the rapidity with which 
they rise during a storm, dangerous, the Estatoe, or 
Toe River, as it is commonly called, and its branches 
being among the most dangerous of the mountain 
streams. 

There is the same glorious wildness in the Black 
Mountain country that one feels in the regions of 
the Smokies and the Balsams ; and whoever ascends 
the Black Mountains, excepting perhaps over the 
trail to Mount Mitchell, unless he is a mountaineer 
of experience, must take a guide or run the risk of 
getting lost in the rhododendrons that heavily clothe 
the slopes of the mountain. To get lost in the rho- 
dodendron on one of these big mountains, where the 
foliage is too dense for one to see the sky, and where 
the strong, twisted limbs form a labyrinth in places 
utterly impassable, is an experience none would 
court, for, besides the trap woven by the rhododen- 
dron limbs, wild streams rush down, ledges and 
chasms obstruct the way, and fogs, the real danger 
in the mountains, are frequent. 

But on a pleasant summer day what is more de- 
lightful than a climb to the top of Mount Mitchell! 



MOUNT MITCHELL 305 

One can easily get to the Black Mountain country 
by way of the railroad that now crosses the Blue 
Ridge a few miles to the north of there; or one can 
follow the old route from the Black Mountain Sta- 
tion in the Swannanoa Valley, taking a long ride to 
the summit of Mount Mitchell and spending the 
night in a cave ; or there is that two days' drive from 
Ashevllle to the foot of the mountain, over roads 
which, speaking after the fashion of the Italians, 
are carriageable — though barely so. The road, 
good enough for some miles out of Asheville, runs 
northward to the Ivy River up which it follows 
through the "Ivy Country," so named because of 
the luxuriance with which the mountain laurel or 
"ivy" densely covered this region. 

At the forks of the river the road goes up the 
North Ivy, where the Craggy Mountains loom into 
view at the gaps, and where the valley, squeezed 
tightly in between the steep sides of the mountains, is 
as wild as a valley can be that contains picturesque 
little houses and has its slopes all tawny with chest- 
nut bloom. It Is a wild valley where sourwood loads 
the air with dainty perfume, morning-glories twine 
smilingly about the bushes, and deep-red or lavender 
bee-balm makes flower-gardens of the damp places. 

The road, zigzagging endlessly about, finally gets 
up out of this valley, crosses a wide gap, and de- 
scends Into the Cane River Valley near the house 
of Big Tom Wilson, the most famous bear-hunter of 
this region. Continuing up Cane River for a few 
miles you cross a picturesque ford and soon reach 



3o6 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the house of Adolphus Wilson, Big Tom's son, at the 
foot of Mount Mitchell. It is very wild here, the 
glorious wildness of this country where everything 
is softened and sweetened by the beautiful growths 
and the touch of the sun in the sparkling air. Near 
the house the woods are fine, the path through them 
takes you past basins of clear green water and past 
damp places full of flowers and down to a stream that 
hastens along, broad, swift, and clear, and famous for 
its trout. 

The Black Mountain country seems to you differ- 
ent from the country south of Asheville. Indeed, all 
this northern region has a quality of its own. It 
seems so free, so superbly wild, so very remote from 
the world, and for ages it has been remote, there 
having been no railroad within easy reach until very 
lately. 

One advantage of settling down for a while in the 
Black Mountain country is that you will be more 
certain to visit Mount Mitchell in good weather; 
you can start when the right morning dawns. For 
this is a rainy country; the clouds hug close about 
the tops of the mountains sometimes weeks in suc- 
cession; so that it is better to go to this region im- 
mediately after a general storm and there await the 
one perfect day. Not that this whole region is con- 
stantly deluged; on the contrary, the valleys are 
often clear when the mountain-tops are smothered 
in clouds. 

One can easily walk to the top of Mount Mitchell, 
but it will be well, if you mean to stay, to have your 



MOUNT MITCHELL 307 

blankets and provisions for the night taken up on 
horseback. The best way is to let the guide go ahead, 
and then loiter on as you please, the hoof-marks 
affording a sure protection against getting lost. 
With a long staff you can cross the rushing trout 
stream dry shod on the projecting rocks, after which 
you begin a most joyous ascent into the clouds. 

The lower part of the mountain is covered with 
hardwood trees, the path leading past a tulip tree 
that twenty years ago measured over thirty-three 
feet in circumference — no one seems to have had 
the "ambition" to measure it since. This majestic 
column had a narrow escape from destruction a few 
years ago when a mountaineer was with difficulty 
dissuaded from chopping into it to get an imaginary 
bee's nest. The fine natural forest is composed of 
many kinds of trees, among which the path winds, 
now in the woods, now across a stream, now through 
an open glade. The air, heavy with the honey-like 
odor of linden trees in full bloom above your head, 
murmurs with the myriads of bees that hover about 
the flowers. The uneven floor of the forest is covered 
with moss and large violet leaves. The white flower 
clusters of treelike rhododendrons gleam on the 
slopes. Laurel presents dense tangles on all sides. 
Hemlocks darken the way, ferns and moss every- 
where carpeting the earth beneath them. 

About three miles up, you pass through what is 
known as the. beech nursery, a level bench grown 
with small beeches where grass and flowers cover the 
floor, a friendly vestibule to the dark forest that lies 



308 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

above. For a little beyond here you enter the bal- 
sams, and it is like entering another world, for in the 
balsam groves no other trees grow, and the young 
trees and the bushes that so lighten other forests are 
entirely lacking here. The tall, dark columns of the 
trees stand so close together that looking ahead 
there seems scarcely room to pass. The overarching 
roof shuts out the light. The pillared aisles are dark 
and sombre. A deep-green, fernlike moss covers the 
ground with an unbroken surface. This wonderful 
moss, sometimes a foot thick, curiously intensifies 
the loneliness of the forest. Over humps and hollows 
the flawless mantle lies, deep, soft, interminable, 
here and there patterned with lighter green oxalis 
leaves, always moist, always sucking in and holding 
fast the clouds that enter, the rains that fall. Contin- 
ually saturated with the mists of heaven this ex- 
quisite monster with its insatiable pure desire be- 
comes the constantly renewing mother of the rivu- 
lets that trickle through the mossy carpet, uniting 
to descend in crystal streams to the earth below. 

This still, dark forest, its sombre aisles unlighted 
by flowers, unwarmed by the sun, covering immense 
spaces of the upper world, seems to exist for itself 
alone, to resent, as it were, the intrusion of human 
life into its mysteries. But it does not exist for itself. 
It is lonely because absorbed with the gigantic task 
of endlessly and without rest transforming the clouds 
into the life-giving streams of the plains. For man 
to slaughter the trees and tear that marvelous veil 
of moss would be to strip fertility from the cotton- 



MOUNT MITCHELL 309 

and the cornfields that He thirsting from the moun- 
tains to the sea. 

Ascending through the balsam forests one seems 
under the spell of the Black Dome. The Black 
Mountains have received their baptism. No matter 
how delicately blue and ethereal distance may paint 
them, to think of them or to see them must ever 
after recall these sombre depths beneath the dark 
boughs. The path is wet and muddy in places, and 
also steep, but at last you pass up out of the dark 
balsams into a sunny meadow where blue eyebrights 
look up from the grass, and from which a stony trail 
bordered with rose-bay leads through stunted firs 
to the open top, where a monument standing alone 
on the very summit of the mountain gives a feeling 
of solemnity to the place. It was erected here in 
1888 to the memory, as the legend on the side reads, 
of the "Rev. Elisha Mitchell, D.D., who, after being 
for thirty-nine years a professor in the University of 
North Carolina, lost his life in the scientific explor- 
ation of this mountain, in the sixty-fourth year of his 
age, June 27th, 1857." 

Dr. Mitchell, being greatly attached to the moun- 
tain, then called Black Dome, and convinced that it 
was the highest in the Appalachians, had often been 
to the top to make his observations and prove his 
theory. One day he went up alone, and did not re- 
turn at the appointed time. As soon as this became 
known, search was made, men and even women col- 
lecting from far and near, for Dr. Mitchell was 
greatly loved. The search, led by several old bear 



310 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

hunters, was finally given up when Dr. Mitchell's 
son, according to Big Tom, said to the men, " I give 
you a thousand thanks, but please hunt again to- 
morrow." Upon which Big Tom volunteered to take 
the lead and it is said he went searching for the miss- 
ing man crying all the way. 

The first trace was found eleven days after the 
disappearance, when Big Tom, sure of signs that no 
one less experienced in woodcraft could have seen, 
the mark of heel-tacks on a root, a stone displaced, 
weeds bent, a mark on a rotten log, went from point 
to point until he saw the missing man's hat on a log 
by a streamside. Above was a deep pool at the foot 
of a waterfall — the hat had floated down from there. 
Big Tom at this point tells the story thus. " I yelled 
and they answered me. They came on. ' I 've found 
his hat.' They all huddled up. And I walked on a 
log and saw him. * Come around, boys, poor old fel- 
ler, here he is.' 'Have you found him?' * I have — '" 
and old Tom's voice breaks and the tears are stream- 
ing down his face. Dr. Mitchell, although so well 
acquainted with the mountain, was believed to have 
become lost in a fog and to have fallen over the preci- 
pice above the cataract whose icy water kept the 
body in perfect condition until it was found. It was 
finally buried on the summit of the mountain so dear 
to him, and whose name was changed in his honor. 

Big Tom was the most famous bear hunter in this 
region, but when we saw him years ago his hunting 
days were over, and his tall form was bent with age, 
but he loved to tell of the by-gone days and his bear 



MOUNT MITCHELL 311 

hunts, and to show you the heavy, old-fashioned 
rifle he prized above all modern inventions. But 
best of all the old man loved to tell of how they went 
in search of Dr. Mitchell and found him looking as 
natural as life in the pure water of the mountain 
pool. So strong an impression has this brave and 
gentle old hunter made upon his community that the 
spot where his little house stands in the Cane River 
Valley is marked on the government map — "Big 
Tom Wilson's." 

The extreme top of Mount Mitchell is bare of 
trees excepting a few stunted firs; but yellow St. 
Johnswort blooms in cheerful profusion over the 
rocks that are daintily fringed with saxifrage and 
sedum, a few twisted rose-bays show traces of earlier 
bloom, and prickly gooseberry bushes are maturing 
fruit for the birds, while sounds in the leaves and a 
flutter of wings betray the presence of a flock of j un- 
cos. On all sides the dark fir-clad slopes descend into 
the shadows below, where streams rush through ra- 
vines choked full of rhododendrons, and mossy 
slopes are impenetrable with laurel. Below the firs 
glorious hardwood trees cover the mountain-sides, 
the ravines, and the valleys, their intermingling hues 
of green blended and lost in tremendous depths of 
blue or purple spaces. 

The view from the summit, off over the ocean of 
land that rolls in stormy waves to the far horizon, is 
stupendous. Beyond the impressive and dark 
masses of the near heights, the great mountains of 
the region, from the Grandfather to the Smokies, 



312 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

crowd the scene, melting as they recede into blue and 
misty shapes. Past the strong headlands of Craggy 
and the Blue Ridge, the mountains towards the 
south subside to rise again in far blue domes and pin- 
nacles. Cultivated valleys, beautiful balds, uprising 
slopes, long curving lines, overlapping summits, — 
it is difficult to disengage individual forms from the 
wonderfully blended whole. And here as elsewhere 
that which most moves the senses is the sweep of the 
near majestic slopes down into the deep blue spaces. 

The cave near the top of the mountain is formed 
by an overhanging ledge, and here it is customary, 
for those wishing to watch the sunrise from the sum- 
mit, to spend the night. And it is worth the effort, 
even if one only sees the mountains emerge from the 
clouds for a moment to be again swallowed up by 
them, for it is seldom that the visitor gets more than 
a glimpse of the whole world at one time, from 
Mitchell's cloud-capped peak. It was in this cave on 
top of Mount Mitchell that one once arrived in a 
pouring rain, after a perilous climb up the eastern 
slope, to find, as sole trace of former visitors, a little 
can partly full of condensed milk, which saved, not 
one's own life, but that of a young squirrel rescued 
on the way up, and who became the hero of many 
pleasant subsequent adventures. 

The Black Mountain Country is very wild, and 
also very beautiful, the ascent of Mount Mitchell 
being but one of many reasons for going there. The 
streams are crystal clear, and everywhere pictur- 
esque houses are hidden away in the coves and val- 



MOUNT MITCHELL 313 

leys from which one gets superb views of the cloud- 
capped mountains that He on all sides. There is no 
more romantically beautiful valley in the moun- 
tains than that of Cane River, which, in its upper 
part, is over three thousand feet high, and nowhere 
falls below twenty-five hundred feet. It runs along 
the whole western base of the Black Mountain 
Range, and from it one sees round-pointed moun- 
tains delightfully grouped in the landscape, and 
quaint houses placed in a superb setting of moun- 
tains and streams. Cane River is named from the 
heavy canebrakes that clothe its banks in places, 
supplying fishpoles, pipestems, and reeds for the 
loom, but the river valley is more noted for the 
products of its farms — grain, grass, and apples. 
No one can visit this region in the summertime 
without noticing the orchards loaded with hand- 
some apples, fruit of so fine a quality that it took a 
prize at the Paris Exposition, the people tell you 
with pride. The land in the Cane River Valley is 
valuable, not only because it is fertile, but because 
the people love it so. One man we were told refused 
a hundred dollars an acre for his farm because "he 
was that foolish over it." And the inhabitants of 
the valley are fine and friendly, as you would expect 
of people who so love their homes. 

Up Cattail Branch, and doubtless elsewhere, you 
can yet find men able to fell a tree and with the 
primitive whipsaw convert it into boards on the 
spot, and in the Black Mountain country one has 
seen a man sitting under a tree in front of his house 



314 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

shaving shingles by hand, those broad, strong shin- 
gles that add so much to the picturesqueness of a 
log house, and that last forever. 

As you drive on down Cane River, now along the 
bank, now crossing a wide ford, you see a village 
ahead of you very beautifully placed in an opening 
between surrounding mountains. This is Burnsville, 
one of the most important and interesting mountain 
villages north of Asheville. Here are schools as well 
as hotels, and from points in and near the village are 
superb views of the high mountains. Within a short 
time Burnsville has come into easy communication 
with the outer world by way of the railroad that 
crosses the mountains a few miles to the north of 
here, and it is safe to predict that this gem of the 
mountains will not be overlooked by those who are 
on the way with money and love and knowledge to 
help transform the wilderness for the few into an 
earthly paradise for the many. 



XXIX 

THE FORKS OF THE RIVER TOE 

THE Estatoe should have" kept its full name, 
but as the matter was not attended to in 
time, so that the river went down on the govern- 
ment maps as the "Toe," it will probably be long 
before the mistake is corrected. 

The South Toe skirts the eastern base of the 
Black Mountains as Cane River skirts the western 
base. The North Toe, a long and winding stream, 
carries the waters from one side of the steep and 
high Yellow Mountain region, in places forcing its 
way through narrow gorges, and joins the South 
Toe a few miles east of Burnsville, the resulting 
river being known as the Toe. The Cane River 
finally enters the Toe, the two forming the Noli- 
chucky River. 

While the Cane River Valley is comparatively 
well peopled, the wild valley of the South Toe has as 
yet few inhabitants, but you will want to go there 
because the river, strong and wild and clear as crys- 
tal, has coming into it the merriest of trout brooks 
straight down from the sky, and because the valley 
itself is a most glorious wilderness, to be in which 
gives one a feeling of having escaped. Enormous 
trees grow on the slopes of the mountains, — oaks, 
chestnuts, beeches, and magnolias mingling their 



3i6 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

foliage above your head as you wander along the 
woodland paths where brooks murmur among the 
ferns, and the rhododendrons are grown to trees. 
From Burnsville one can get to this fair, wild valley 
by following down the Little Crabtree Creek four or 
five miles to Micaville, a village that consists of a 
post-office and very little else. 

The Toe River throughout its course is famous 
for its floods, which may be why the South Toe Val- 
ley, which is quite wide in places, is so sparsely set- 
tled. But it is the North Toe that holds the prize 
record in this matter. After the memorable flood- 
year when Bakersville was so nearly washed away, 
one saw debris in the tree limbs some twenty-five or 
thirty feet above the level of the stream in the nar- 
row cut near Spruce Pine. Everything had given 
way before the fury of the waters, including the iron 
bridge that had recently been built across the 
troublesome stream. To have an iron bridge meant 
much to the people, you may be sure, and no doubt 
the story told was true of how they gathered to- 
gether on the riverbank and stood for hours watch- 
ing the bridge as the water rose and covered it, and 
how when at last it gave way and went with a crash 
downstream some of the watchers wrung their hands 
and wept. 

It is a memorable experience to cross the ford at 
Spruce Pine when the waters are up, as one dis- 
covered when, after waiting for days weather- 
bound at Marion, the chance came to ascend the 
mountains and attempt the ford. The road up the 




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THE FORKS OF THE RIVER TOE 317 

Blue Ridge crosses Armstrong Creek several times, 
a good preparation for the graver perils of the Toe, 
for Armstrong is one of those streams that come like 
a millrace down the mountain-side, dangerous not 
only in time of general flood, but because it rises 
without warning, becoming impassable almost in a 
moment after a sudden downpour somewhere up in 
the high mountains. 

The entrance to the Toe ford, one found to be a 
newmade sandbank down which was a steep pitch 
into the rushing yellow-red water, while in the trees 
high above your head you saw the debris stranded 
there by the flood. The river was terrifying enough 
to look at, and once in, it seemed for a few moments 
as though the end had come. Although the driver 
headed well upstream so as not to be washed below 
the ford where was no exit through the rocky wall, it 
seemed as though we were being borne swiftly down 
to destruction. The water suddenly rose about your 
knees and the horses disappeared all but their heads: 
they were swimming. This lasted but a terrible few 
moments, however, while the driver sat still and 
pale, his eyes riveted on the horses, the reins held 
loosely in his fingers. It was discovered afterward 
that this foolhardy feat was the result of courage 
stored in a bottle in the driver's pocket. He had gone 
down the mountain before a long rainstorm came 
and raised the waters, and he had been detained so 
long that he was ready to take any chance to get 
home. Of course one did not know these things until 
afterwards, and the fording of the Toe in retrospect 



3i8 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

has something of the emotional value of the conflict 
with the powers of the air on Whiteside. 

Doubtless there is a bridge over the river again, as 
this happened several years ago, pedestrians at that 
time being obliged to cross by way of a chain bridge. 
There is probably nothing worse than a chain bridge 
short of the bamboo bridges such as one sees in 
pictures of wild countries. The narrow footway is 
suspended high above the water, the floor being 
made of slats so far apart that you cannot help see- 
ing the water rushing below, which gives you the 
feeling that you are going to step through. But 
worse than this is the motion of the bridge, that, the 
moment you step upon it, billows up and down as 
though trying to shake you off, the rope hand-rail 
on either side being but one degree better than no- 
thing. These suspension bridges are used where the 
stream is too swift to allow of a "bench," and the 
people very truthfully say, "Strangers don't like 
them noway." 

One coming up the mountain now will not be 
likely to drive, as the railroad disdainfully spans the 
torrents and has a station, if you please, at Spruce 
Pine itself. In the old days upon reaching Spruce 
Pine one always stopped at English's. To enter this 
part of the country meant to stop at the large, pic- 
turesque log house set back among the trees with its 
vines and flowers, and than which no place was 
better known the mountains over. It is also near 
Spruce Pine, it will be remembered, that one finds 
the most noted of the beryl mines, whence come 



THE FORKS OF THE RIVER TOE 319 

shining crystals for ladies' necklaces and rings and 
brooches. 

Wild as parts of the Southern mountains yet re- 
main, it is seldom one can get any real sense of the 
perils of primitive life. The wolves are gone, the bears 
are almost gone, the larger rivers are being spanned 
by safe bridges, contests with lightning are only for 
those peculiarly favored of the gods, new methods of 
lumbering are retiring the old-time logging train; 
yet it is in the forest that we can get closest to the 
eternal conflict between nature and man carried on 
by the early settlers, in the forest where the great 
immobile trees resent, as it were, the power that lays 
them low. Even to be an onlooker at the conflict is 
exciting, as one discovered that day in the woods 
when one sat down to rest near the upper edge of a 
rough, newly made trough that extended down the 
mountain-side. As far as one could see, on all sides, 
stood large trees, oaks, tulips, and chestnuts. Shouts 
were heard in the distance and loud crashing sounds. 
Nearer came the noise, and then down the steep 
hollow of the trough a yoke of oxen moved slowly, 
very slowly into view. They were straining forward 
until they were almost on their knees. Foam hung 
from their mouths, their eyes bulged, the veins stood 
out like cords under their sides and on their legs. A 
long whiplash came suddenly, out of space appar- 
ently, and stung their panting flanks, a man's voice 
shouted commands, and the cattle strained yet 
harder down the slope. 

Behind them came a second yoke of oxenj fast- 



320 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

ened to the same chain. They, too, were leaning 
forward on the yoke. They, too, dropped foam from 
their mouths and their flanks heaved. As these 
passed the opening in the trees, a third yoke fol- 
lowed, straining like the others, their noses almost 
touching the ground, their flanks ridged with whip- 
lashes. The descent was steep and rough, men 
shouted frantic commands to the near cattle and 
far back in the woods. Following the third yoke 
came a fourth, leaning forward like the others, 
disfigured with welts like the others, foaming at the 
mouth and with bulging eyes. Behind them came a 
fifth pair of cattle, their weight on the yoke, their 
muscles standing out, toiling as though they were 
trying to move the mountain itself. 

Suddenly there was a cry along the line, men 
came running, whiplashes stung the faces of the 
oxen, and they halted in their steep descent. The 
chain slackened and rattled, then suddenly tightened 
again, jerking some of the cattle out of their tracks. 
Wilder shouts came from the woods above, mingled 
with a rumbling and then a crashing sound. An 
instant's ominous silence and the commotion was 
renewed with tenfold vehemence in the rear. The 
men who had come forward ran back. The cattle 
stood panting in the trail. 

Minutes passed while the sounds of a struggle of 
some sort came loudly through the forest. At last 
the command to advance was given, the long lashes 
of plaited hickory bark swung out and the ten huge 
forms bent strongly to the yoke. Behind them came 



THE FORKS OF THE RIVER TOE 321 

the sixth yoke, foaming at the mouth, with protrud- 
ing eyes and every muscle tense. Slowly, terribly, 
the long line of cattle pulled down the rough descent, 
now stumbling, now jerked from the narrow trail to 
be at once mercilessly whipped into line. The 
seventh yoke, with lowered heads and panting sides, 
was followed by the eighth, a lordly pair, for the 
creatures were larger as the line advanced. These 
great brutes were dark-red with white stars on their 
foreheads, their breathing was audible, they were 
almost groaning, their flanks rose and fell in quick, 
short jerks, foam dripped from their mouths, their 
tongues hung out as they strained forward against 
the yoke. 

Suddenly the commotion in the rear was renewed, 
the taut chain jerked, the cattle veered, the chain 
suddenly slackened and one of the great red oxen lost 
his footing. He stumbled frightfully against a tree 
trunk, his foot sank into a hole, it seemed as though 
his legs must be broken and his great sides crushed as 
he fell forward against the tree on his neck, his head 
stretched out. Several whiplashes swung out and 
descended with sharp reports upon his quivering 
skin, a dozen men yelled, and he struggled to his 
feet with bloodshot eyes. 

Again the long line started, again the living en- 
gines bent to their herculean task, and the ninth 
yoke came into view. The noise increased and the 
sound drew nearer as of a tremendous weight crash- 
ing down the mountain-side, waking the forest to 
horrid clamor. The tenth yoke passed, a pair of 



322 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

enormous brutes with bloodshot eyes and heaving 
flanks, like the others leaning their weight on the 
yoke, foam dripping from their open mouths. Be- 
hind them came the eleventh and last yoke bending 
to their task, suffering with dumb endurance the 
agony of their brutal labor. 

The chain was longer behind these, and then 
there appeared at the opening and stopped, as the 
cry to halt rang down the line, the end of an enor- 
mous tulip-tree log. Not less than ten feet in diame- 
ter nor less than forty feet long, it lay in the trough 
that had been ploughed out by other logs. As it lay 
there it seemed malignant and conscious, as though 
resenting being torn from its place of pride in the 
forest where it had so long towered above the other 
trees. 

The trail changed its direction at this point and 
the great log had to be turned. Shouts from the men, 
cracking of whips, creaking of yokes, rattling of 
chains — and finally the long line of cattle stood in 
the new line of advance. But the log lay as before: 
it had to be turned, not by the cattle, but by the 
army of men that had now come to view. Along the 
sides of the great column they ranged themselves, 
cant-hook in hand, and at the word of command 
tried to move it, pivoting it on the chain end and 
striving to swing the other end about until it should 
lie in the new line of direction. As the cattle had 
toiled, now toiled the men. The veins started on 
their temples, their eyes stood out, they were silent 
during the effort. 



THE FORKS OF THE RIVER TOE 323 

The log moved, it turned, and then — in spite of 
their almost superhuman efforts, it rolled. Over it 
rolled down the slope, twisting the chain, dragging 
four yokes of oxen into the bushes as though they 
had been so many straws. There were shrieks of 
command and of fear as the men on the lower side 
leaped out of the way, while others horribly whipped, 
goaded, and shrieked at the cattle that had fallen 
down the hillside. The log had come to rest perilously 
near the perpendicular wall of a low ledge of rock 
and the men had the dangerous task of returning it to 
its place. Some below steadied it and pushed with 
levers, while those above struck into it with their 
strong hooks and put all their strength to the task. 
For an hour the struggle between the log and the 
men continued, a struggle fraught with danger to 
the lives of both man and beast. But the more active 
power won, and the great log lay in the new path. All 
was ready again, the whips cracked, the men shouted, 
the cattle bent to the yokes, the log yielded, the long 
line moved on. 

The way was very dangerous now, as a steep in- 
cline lay just ahead. The men with their iron hooks 
jumped now this side and now that to keep the log 
in its track. The trail grew steeper and the great 
bolt began to move too rapidly. The men with their 
hooks in its sides held back with all their strength, 
others shrieked at the cattle and goaded them 
brutally that they might keep clear; they made 
a sudden pitch forward and fell over each other, 
the last yoke but barely escaping a lunge from the 



324 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

dreadful object behind. The noise of the shouting 
was deafening. 

Thus had the great log been coaxed and driven, 
held back and drawn forth, out of the roadless forest. 
At last it was pulled up a gentle slope and on a level 
space came to rest alongside a group of others like 
it — to have its bark removed and await its turn at 
the portable sawmill that stood a few rods away. The 
logs are never barked in the forest; the men say 
they would be killed getting them out unless the 
bark was on to keep the logs from slipping. 

On the platform of the mill a log had just been 
rolled ; it was placed against the saw, it seemed to the 
imagination to shiver, then a long, piercing shriek 
rent the air, and a slab dropped from its side, the 
first step in the process of converting a tree into a 
pile of boards. These boards are placed in what 
seems light loads on rude wagons, before each wagon 
a line of oxen is attached, and over the rough roads 
the load is drawn, sometimes many miles, to the 
nearest railway station. Thus does the forest inflict 
its penalty of pain, and thus has the world been 
supplied with wood from the stricken giants of the 
beautiful, devastated forests of the Southern moun- 
tains. 



XXX 

LEDGER AND THE ROAN 

THE nameof MIcaville explains itself. It lies in 
the most important mica region of the moun- 
tains, where the rocks sparkle, the roads glitter, and 
nearly everybody is engaged one way or another in 
working in mica. You see women and girls sitting un- 
der sheds cutting plates of mica into regular shapes, 
and piles of mica- waste glinting by the roadside or 
flashing near the mouths of the mines on the hillsides. 
Yet there is nothing here to suggest the hardships of a 
mining country, for the mines are for the most part 
near or at the surface, and the workers are the moun- 
tain people themselves. It is here that, walking on a 
dusty day, you come home sparkling like a Christ- 
mas-tree decoration, and here that the laurel bushes 
glitter with little points of light that do not come 
from their glossy leaves. Not only at Micaville, 
but all through this region the earth sparkles pro- 
digiously. 

If you follow the road northeast from Micaville, 
you will not only get some very fine views of the 
Black Mountains, but you will cross a charming 
ford of the wild North Toe that enters the South 
Toe a little below here, and best of all you will soon 
come to Ledger, which, though it may be little more 
than a name on the map, is much more than that 



326 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

to those who have enjoyed the hospitaHty of the 
friends once living there, and from whose home as a 
centre this whole beautiful country lay open. 

Ledger was as remote as any place in the moun- 
tains when one first went there, but now the new 
railroad, that has performed the feat of crossing 
the mountains by ascending the wild Toe Valley 
and descending the Blue Ridge, has a station on the 
river a few miles from Ledger. 

Ledger will long be remembered as the home of 
Professor Charles Hallet Wing, who, after many 
years of notable service as professor of chemistry 
in the Boston Institute of Technology, came here 
before there had been any change in the customs of 
the country, to escape the turmoil of the outer world. 
Professor Wing vehemently disclaimed any share in 
changing — he would not call it "improving" — 
the life of the people, but he made his charming log 
house, his barn and outbuildings, also his fences 
with their help. In his carpenter and blacksmith 
shops the youth of the neighborhood learned the 
use of tools, and how to make many things. They 
also laid pipes to carry water to the house, and be- 
came familiar with the electric motor that lighted 
the place. 

Professor Wing, with no thought of course of 
benefiting the people, built a school-house and lib- 
rary building, the school-rooms seating one hun- 
dred and twenty-five pupils, provided two teachers, 
and himself conducted a manual training depart- 
ment which he fitted up in the basement. At the 



LEDGER AND THE ROAN 327 

time of Professor Wing's first coming scarcely any 
one in that region could read or write, but that this 
was the fault of circumstances alone was shown by 
the fact that there were two hundred and fifty 
applicants the first year the school was opened, these 
ranging from six years old to forty, and this school 
was successfully conducted without the infliction 
of any sort of punishment. 

The library was in time supplied with some fifteen 
thousand books which were sent to Professor Wing 
by friends who wanted to help from all over the 
country. The library was kept by a native youth 
who was trained for the purpose and taught to 
rebind books, a very necessary art, since some of 
the most-used books were those that had been dis- 
carded by the Boston Public Library. At the little 
Good-Will Library in the heart of the Carolina 
mountains, the old volumes were cleansed and re- 
paired and books sent out all over the mountains, 
being loaned not only to those who came for them, 
but sent in the form of small, traveling libraries, 
each box containing seventy-five books, wherever a 
man would " tote " them in his wagon, be responsible 
for their distribution, and after three months bring 
them back again — and get another set if he so 
desired. The library was free, with rules but no 
fines, and it is illustrative of the quality of the 
people that the rules were not broken and that at 
the end of the first year not a book was missing, none 
had been kept out overtime, while less than six per 
cent of those taken out had been fiction! What a 



328 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

boon it was to come upon one of these cases of 
books when storm-bound in some otherwise bookless 
place! One remembers whiling away several stormy 
days reading Froude's "Essays" from one of these 
libraries, which among more popular reading al- 
ways contained a lure for the more sober-minded. 

In the home at Ledger the housework was done 
by mountain girls trained by the genial hostess, 
who loved her girl charges and taught them every- 
thing they might need to know in making a home for 
themselves. One remembers the pretty sewing-room 
in a cabin in the woods, with its sewing-machine and 
work-table where the girls went afternoons to chat- 
ter together and sew for themselves, with an occa- 
sional visit from the beloved lady who dropped in to 
advise or praise. 

We accused the Professor and his wife of ruining 
the picturesqueness of the country for a radius of 
miles about their place, for paint and upright fences 
and buildings, tidy yards and farms, with every- 
where signs of modern methods of life, had somehow 
followed their coming. But there were still left 
plenty of log houses to repay one's wanderings along 
the shady roads where the picturesque foliage of the 
buckeye mingled so prettily with the leaves of the 
other hardwood trees, and where wild plums offered 
you high-flavored fruits in the summer, and chinka- 
pins showered bright brown nuts about you in the 
fall. 

Is it Uncle Remus with his Brer Rabbit who has 
cast such a glamour over the chinkapin — that mini- 



LEDGER AND THE ROAN 329 

ature chestnut tree whose little sweet nuts are scat- 
tered so plentifully about the roadsides in the fall? 
And what a pretty custom it is to speak of coins 
of small denomination as "chinkapin change." It 
quite takes the sordidness out of money. The buck- 
eye, too, has over it a glamour of romance, and while 
its large glossy nuts are not to be eaten, it lights up 
the forest in an enchanting manner with its large 
clusters of red, pink, and yellow blossoms that cover 
the tree and open about the time the tulip-tree 
begins to bloom. Throughout the hardwood forests 
of the higher mountains it grows to perfection. 

One never thinks of Ledger without recalling de- 
lightful walks in search of pictures, for there are no 
better fireplaces and looms, nor more picturesque 
little mills and bee-gums any where in the moun- 
tains than in the neighborhood of Ledger. Can one 
ever forget Bear Creek and the friendly people there ! 
— how one would like to speak their names, for the 
names of the people recall cherished memories of the 
mountains, each region having its own names. It 
was up Bear Creek that we found an old lady of 
ninety spinning on her porch, and up Bear Creek we 
learned new patterns on old coverlets, and got many 
a picturesque washing scene and interior where the 
great fireplace was draped with strings of beans or of 
pumpkin, and where we saw big wild grapes strung 
like beads, and hung up to dry. 

Wandering about the country, how many an 
open-air cane-mill we visited where the people were 
grinding out their winter supply of "long sweeten- 



330 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

ing," and who never failed to offer you a cupful of 
the boiling syrup. And following the pleasant fra- 
grance of wintergreen, we found the "birch still" 
hidden in the woods, though not for reasons of se- 
crecy, as no penalty is attached to the distillation of 
the essential oils that are, at the country stores, 
exchanged for shoes and sugar. 

One's youthful conception of birch bark, that it 
was something that grew out in the woods to be 
chewed, is here enlarged by discovering the birch 
still, wherever the sweet birch abounds, zealously 
extracting the fragrant oil that goes to flavor our 
candies and perfume our medicines under the name 
of "wintergreen." Another youthful belief, gathered 
from literature that oil floats, is also modified by the 
discovery that birch oil at least could never be cast 
upon the troubled waters, because it is red and 
heavy, and sinks to the bottom of the bottle of water 
into which it runs from the " worm " in the still. The 
only objection one has to the birch still is the 
pathetic bare trunks left standing in the forest where 
the bark has been completely cut from the trees. 

This objection does not attach to the delightful 
pennyroyal still that one sometimes finds near the 
dry banks, where pennyroyal grows in intoxicating 
abundance, and the gathering of which seems to 
leave no scar nor in any way diminish the supply. 
Pennyroyal oil floats, as oil ought, on the surface of 
the water into which it drops, and the pennyroyal 
still has so thoroughly scented the halls of memory 
that one can never again smell the aromatic herb in 



LEDGER AND THE ROAN 331 

any form whatever without seeing those open sunny 
banks hot with pennyroyal that He on the side of 
Roan Mountain. And how many know the refresh- 
ing quahty of a sprig of pennyroyal on a hot summer 
day. To chew this, or one of the pungent mints that 
also grow here in abundance, can sometimes add 
a mile or two to the day's walk. There are oil stills 
in the mountains south of Asheville, but it happened 
to be these of the more northern regions that one 
first and most often happened upon, and about which 
cling so many fragrant memories. Pennyroyal and 
ginseng are by no means the only herbs gathered in 
the mountains. Indeed, the higher Appalachians are 
a principal source of supply for a great variety of 
medicinal herbs, many tons of which are yearly 
shipped to all parts of the country and to Europe. 
In the season you are always meeting the herb col- 
lectors, either gathering herbs from the immense 
wild gardens where they grow or "toting" them 
down the mountains in great bags on their backs. 
One remembers gardens of balmony on the Grand- 
father Mountain, where after the collectors had gone 
you would not notice that any had been removed, so 
dense was the growth. The herbs are taken home 
and dried and exchanged at the country stores, that 
carry on a lively traffic in this industry which keeps 
many a mountain family in the necessities of life. You 
see the herbs, each in its season drying everywhere, 
spread out on the roofs, on the porch floors and — 
under the beds. 
The curious names of some of the places in the 



332 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

mountains owe their origin to the sudden demand 
on the part of the Government for short, distinctive 
titles for post-offices. It takes either a great deal of 
time or a very quick wit properly to name a place, 
and so we have Spruce Pine not because spruce 
pines abound, — there are only two there, — but 
because somebody happened to think of it. For the 
same reason, no doubt. Ledger got its name, the 
true significance of which dawns upon you when 
discovering a few miles away a place called "Day- 
book!" 

The pretty name of Lofus Lory, that so pleased 
and puzzled you until curiosity overcame discretion 
and led to inquiry, was not a sudden inspiration, 
though the reason for it is obscure, one being unable 
to discover that it in any way deserves its ortho- 
graphic title. For "Lofus Lory" when spelled out 
becomes "Loafer's Glory." As it has no post-office, 
and has not yet been printed on any map, there is 
hope that phonetic spelling may be adopted in time 
to save it. The principal and perhaps the only family 
at Lofus Lory is distinguished for nothing worse 
than its efforts to raise melons in a sandy bottom 
near the Toe ; but when you inquire about the melons, 
with interested motives, you learn that the river one 
day removed a part of the farm with the melons 
thereon, leaving the ambitious Lofus Lory like unto 
the rest of the world so far as melons are concerned. 

The temptation to linger about Ledger is difficult 
to overcome, but there is the great Roan waiting 
but a little way north from here, to reach which one 



LEDGER AND THE ROAN 333 

follows the road to Bakersvllle, preferably afoot, for 
it is only a few miles, and there are those charming 
views of the mountains, deep indigo in one direction, 
while in the other the Blacks appear, sombre, solid, 
and strong, or else seeming to hang suspended, half 
dissolved in gray rain-mists. To enjoy the way 
properly one should not only walk, but take time 
to sit on a rock and consider how the tall white spikes 
of the black snakeroot shine out of the dark woods, 
and ponder over the peculiar, penetrating odor of 
the sourwood that on a hot day pursues one like a 
dream, the fragrance seeming to lie in wait at the 
turns of the road to embrace one, the trees whence it 
comes standing somewhere unseen in the depths of 
the forest. 

Bakersville lies in the valley of Cane Creek that 
runs down the middle of the village with houses on 
either side, the road and the creek identical in 
places. This confidence in pretty Cane Creek was 
ill-requited when, in the terrible floods that occurred 
a few years ago, it rose and roared and thundered 
through the valley and nearly wiped out of exist- 
ence Bakersville, which is the largest village in this 
part of the mountains, and which like Burnsville, is 
an educational centre. Now the railroad that has 
made its way up the wild Toe River passes close, 
making the fortunate village easily accessible to the 
outer world that stands knocking at the gates of 
the mountains. 

But to the visitor who comes to explore, Bakers- 
ville's principal attraction is its proximity to the 



334 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

Roan and the Big Yellow, the most famous balds In 
the region, perhaps in all the mountains. The coves 
and valleys at the foot of the Roan are thickly 
settled, and a road crosses over the summit of the 
mountain connecting the hotel there not only with 
the new railroad to the south, but with another rail- 
road to the north that originally came in from the 
west for the use of the iron company at Cranberry, 
and now crosses the Blue Ridge, so that the northern 
part of the mountains within a few years has be- 
come almost as accessible as the regions about 
Asheville. 

The ascent of the Roan from either side Is delight- 
ful. From Bakersville the road leads up the pictur- 
esque Rock Creek Valley that lies squeezed between 
the Pumpkin-Patch Mountain on the south and the 
slopes of the big Roan on the north. The Roan, 
standing boldly out In the landscape, is remarkable 
as being without trees excepting in the ravines and a 
narrow belt of firs towards the top. For this reason 
It Is a mountain of pastures, as are Grassy Ridge 
Bald and the Big Yellow Mountain connecting with 
it towards the east. Near the top of Roan, which is 
over sixty-three hundred feet high. Is Cloudland 
Hotel where one dines in North Carolina and sleeps 
in Tennessee, the hotel being cut in two by the state 
line. 

Roan Mountain has long been famous for two 
things, the circular rainbow sometimes seen from the 
summit, and the variety of wild flowers that grow on 
its slopes, it being reported that more species are 



LEDGER AND THE ROAN 335 

found here than in any other one place on the conti- 
nent. One not a botanist going up in the summer 
will be delighted with the luxuriance and variety of 
colors assumed by the bee-balm, blood-red prevail- 
ing, although some of the springs and damp hollows 
are painted about with lavender, blush-rose, dark 
rose-red, pale honey-yellow or white bee-balm, and all 
of them, no matter what the color, are full of hum- 
ming-birds. The botanies have no idea how many 
colors this charming plant assumes on the open slopes 
of the Roan. From these slopes one gets fine views 
of the surrounding mountains, views sometimes 
framed in rose-bay bushes, when your imagination 
paints a glowing picture of the scene when the rose- 
bay is in bloom. 

Near the summit you notice the little houstonia, 
with plumy saxifrage and pink oxalis everywhere in 
the mosslike growths that cover the rocks, and you 
will also notice, although you may not know how 
rare it is, the large buttercup-like flower with a 
geranium leaf, the Geum grandiflorum. If it is sum- 
mer you will see the bright flowers of the lily named 
after Asa Gray, it having been first captured on the 
Roan, although it is abundant all through the 
mountains. And you will be sure to taste the little 
high-flavored strawberries hiding on the grassy 
ledges. 

There are a few spruce and fir trees, mountain 
ashes and alders scattered about near the top, but 
otherwise the Roan presents wide reaches of pasture 
land where flocks and herds are grazing, and where. 



336 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

as you stand looking over the mountains beyond, a 
heifer, that has long been gazing stolidly at you, 
draws near and licks your hand, probably to find 
out what that motionless figure is really made of. 

There is no mountain whose name you more often 
hear than that of the Roan. And the estimation in 
which the people hold this great bald was shown one 
day when a stranger, seeking to entertain a moun- 
tain woman, told her about Italy with its Vesuvius, 
its great churches, and its people with their strange 
customs. When the story was done, the woman 
looked intently at the narrator and then asked 
critically, "Have you-all been to Roan Mountain?" 
Being answered in the negative, she added, some- 
what condescendingly, "Well, if you want to travel 
and see something, you ought to go to Roan Moun- 
tain." 

From the summit of the Roan you can continue 
on and down the north side to the Roan Mountain 
Station on the railroad, or you can follow the long 
trail over Grassy Ridge Bald, along the side of the 
Big Yellow and Hump Mountains down to Elk Park, 
where you can take the train by way of Cranberry 
and its famous iron mines to the Linville Country. 
On a fair day the long walk over the trail is the better 
choice, but you will have to take a guide, though 
one remembers sitting down on a mountain-top 
where two paths crossed, and studying out the situ- 
ation on the government map while the mountain 
woman who had come to show the way looked on. 
Of course we were not lost, nobody ever is, the 



LEDGER AND THE ROAN 337 

nearest to it ever known being by a mountain man 
who admitted that he had once spent three days 
plumb bewildered in the woods. 

The Topographic Maps of the United States 
Geological Survey are the best guides one could 
have for general use; indeed, many of them are so 
detailed that one could follow the obscurest trails 
by their help. And they are always present, being 
printed in sections on sheets that can be folded small 
enough to be carried in the pocket, and they cost 
only five cents apiece. These maps are a splendid 
tribute to the work done by the Department that 
issues them. To get them it is only necessary to 
write to the Director at Washington, D. C., who will 
send a plan of the maps, from which you can select 
those you need. 



XXXI 

LINVILLE FALLS 

ONE goes to Linville Falls to see the beautiful 
river at the point where it takes that leap into 
the gorge, forming the most noted cataract in the 
mountains. Linville, under the Grandfather Moun- 
tain, lies in a green bowl with tree-covered hills for 
its sides. Above the hotel, on the edge of the green 
bowl, look out cottages and summer houses, for 
Linville is a well-known resort. The river flows 
sparkling and dancing along one side of the bowl on 
its way to the falls ten or twelve miles south of here. 
The Linville is a delightful river, a clear trout strearn 
from its birth-spring back of the Grandfather down 
to the falls and on through the ten-miles-long canyon 
below them, the canyon it has worn between Lin- 
ville Mountain and wild Hawksbill and Tablerock. 
The way to Linville from Ledger is by a pleasant 
and varied route up the North Toe River, then over 
ridges, up the Plumtree Creek, across the Blue 
Ridge, past Crossnore under the Snake Den Moun- 
tain, and on through Kawana, where you will stop to 
visit the Highlands Nursery that has done so much 
to make the beautiful growths of these mountains 
known to the outside world. It began twenty-five 
years ago with half an acre of land as an experiment. 
Now it covers one hundred acres, and every year 



LINVILLE FALLS 339 

sends out many carloads of the beautiful things that 
grow here and which find their way, not only to 
different parts of our own country, but all over 
Europe. This nursery owes its existence to Mr. S. T. 
Kelsey, of New York State, who came here from 
Kansas, and, with the energy and optimism of the 
North and the West combined, tried to transform 
the mountains. But he came too soon; the hour 
of awakening had not struck; so when he laid out 
a whole town on the Highlands plateau after the 
Western fashion, the people looked on In amaze- 
ment and Highlands remained untransformed, as 
remained the rest of the mountains at that time, 
excepting for the roads he projected. For Mr. 
Kelsey had yet greater genius for making roads than 
towns, and laid out the finest of those first made In 
the mountains, among them the beautiful Yonah- 
lossee Road that crosses the southern slopes of the 
Grandfather Mountain, scarcely changing its grade 
for a distance of nearly twenty miles. It was also 
Mr. Kelsey who planned LInville with Its hotels 
and its lake. But the best thing he did was making 
the gardens and taming the most decorative and 
beautiful of the wild growths, not only the royal 
rhododendrons, laurel, and azaleas, and the noble 
forest trees, but the silver-bell, the sourwood, the 
leucothoe, the yellow-root, the wild lilies and or- 
chids, and a hundred other charming wild flowers, 
including Shortia that gave the botanists such long 
search, Inducing them to tolerate the limitations of 
a man-made garden, and also to bloom yet more 



340 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

freely, if possible, there than in the wilderness. Al- 
though no longer alone in its work, the Highland 
Nursery was the first native enterprise to distribute 
the decorative plants of this region from the North 
Carolina mountains, and from it the estate of Bilt- 
more supplied its first needs. 

It is an interesting fact that, long before the 
people of America had learned to appreciate the 
beautiful plants with which their country is so 
richly endowed, these were used and highly valued 
in European gardens, and English estates were beau- 
tified with our rhododendrons, laurels, and azaleas 
long before we had learned to value them as orna- 
mental growths for cultivated grounds. It was 
Michaux, who, transported by the beauty of the wild 
flowers of the New World, took many of them home 
and introduced them to the people of Europe. It 
was he also who taught the mountain people the 
value of ginseng and how to prepare it for the 
Chinese market. 

It is but a few pleasant miles from Kawana to 
Linville, along a road very much interfered with by 
little tributaries of the Linville River, among them 
the pretty Grandmother Creek. But if you want to 
go directly to the falls from Kawana, you turn 
towards the south instead of the north, and follow 
the road a few miles down the river to the Linville 
Falls settlement: this is about a mile from the falls 
to which a rough road leads, for the country about 
here is extremely wild: the woods are choked with 
dense growths of laurel and rhododendron, and the 



LINVILLE FALLS 341 

land is torn by ravines. For we are now on the outer 
side of the Blue Ridge adjoining the peculiarly wild 
foothill country, and whether the Linville River 
breaks through the wall of the Blue Ridge depends 
upon whether you consider the narrow Linville 
Mountain a part of the Blue Ridge or a part of the 
foothills, for it is over the upper edge of the deep 
gorge that separates Linville Mountain from a high 
ridge of the foothills that the river makes its escape. 
But however geology may decide the matter, in 
appearance the Linville Mountain belongs to the 
Blue Ridge, and one always thinks of it as ending 
the mountain plateau at that point. 

Across the clearing, at the end of the rough road 
that leads to the falls, stands a house on the very 
brink of the precipice. As you approach it, the thun- 
der of the water grows louder: you have a sense of 
Hearing some catastrophe in nature. At the brink 
the mountain stops short without the slightest 
preparatory slope, without a buttressing spur. It 
drops in an upright wall, along the face of which a 
path descends through the rhododendrons that have 
grown along a narrow ledge. Down the path you 
take your way. At a certain point in it you can step 
out on the top of a large rock and see the river raging 
between cleft walls directly below you. As you con- 
tinue the steep descent beyond here, rhododendrons 
offer you long, curved arms to hold by, and lend you 
their roots to step on. Finally, you jump down to a 
broad stone floor, and before you in its bed of solid 
rock lies the large pool of the upper falls into which 



342 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the river enters in two wide, low cascades that are 
separated from each other by tree-covered rocks. 

The shining Linville steps down from the forest, 
through which it has sparkled and sung all the way 
from its source at the back of the Grandfather, to 
rest as it were in the beautiful pool and make ready 
for that great leap down the wall of the mountain. 
High walls clad with living green encircle the pool 
on whose calm surface are mirrored the trees and 
the sky. To the eye it is a scene of peace, but in the 
ears is the tumultuous beating of the waters. The 
outlet of the pool is a deep and narrow crack. It 
is as though the broad river-bed had suddenly been 
set up on edge. The water plunges with a roar into 
this winding channel, rages about the impediments 
there, and finally escapes through a cleft in the rock 
to leap over the wall of the mountain. 

Across a wide stone floor one walks to the scene of 
commotion in the narrow channel, but it is impossible 
to get a view of the final plunge without gaining a 
point of vantage by a jump too dangerous to think 
of. It fills one with a sense of impending danger to 
stand shut in by the high walls and hear the strife 
between the water and the rocks : and if it is terrible 
at this safe season of the year, imagine it in the 
spring floods! Standing on the wide, dry pavement, 
you look up to see a drift-log caught in the bushes 
on the cliff-side high above your head. It is hard to 
realize it, yet you know the water put it there. It 
was at a time of high water that the upper rim of 
the lower fall gave way, forming a step, and consid- 



LINVILLE FALLS 343 

erably lowering the final leap, thus taking away 
something from its impressiveness. 

Climbing up again to where the path branches, if 
you want to go to the foot of the fall, where you can 
get a near view of it, you turn aside here — and take 
the consequences. A stream of water trickles down 
the slippery path, which is half rock, half rhododen- 
dron roots. The limbs of the rhododendrons twist 
about you like enormous snakes. You step down 
where you can, but where the distance is too great 
you have to jump, that is, you jump if you dare, 
but it is not likely you will dare, knowing what is 
below. The alternative is to sit down and slide over 
the rocks covered with black and sticky mud. It is a 
breathless scramble and your arms ache from hold- 
ing to the rhododendron cables. Finally, you reach 
the narrow ledge of rock that borders the deep pool 
into which the river drops. There it is, close to you, 
a high, white mass of foam and deafening you with 
its thunder. If the sun is shining you may see rain- 
bows playing about it, and in any event you will get 
a wetting from the spray. A wall of rock rises above 
you and there is scarcely room to take a step, so 
close to your feet lies the deep water. There are big 
wise trout in this pool, the people say, but it takes 
a very wise angler to lure them out. 

Getting back again is worse than getting down. 
Unfortunately gravity prevents sliding up, and a 
sudden descent into Avernus seems quite fearfully 
imminent as you slip and struggle and cling to the 
rhododendrons. But before starting up you can if 



344 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

you like follow along the edge of the cliff, as far as 
your nerve lasts, for the path is over rhododendron 
roots that have fastened themselves into the face of 
the rock. How they got footing here is a mystery ; 
but here they are, and in behind their contorted 
limbs you creep along like an ant, hoping with every 
step that the roots will not give way. 

This path, that grows less as it goes on, is followed 
by ardent fishermen, who either go back if it gets too 
lonesome for them, or else keep on. For if you keep 
on long enough you can get down to the bottom of 
the gorge, — not so hastily as the descripton may 
seem to imply, though that too is possible, — and 
when you get down, it must be almost worth the 
effort, for you will find yourself in the famous Lin- 
ville Gorge that for the next ten miles is seldom 
traveled by a human being, although it is the finest 
trout stream in the mountains. The river runs be- 
tween walls that rise many hundreds of feet high, 
and in some places the gorge is so narrow that there 
is room only for the river, and he who ventures in 
must wade as best he can through the swift water as 
it dashes about and over the rocks and boulders. 
Those who have been in the gorge speak enthusias- 
tically of its grandeur and beauty. 

Ordinary humanity, however, views the fall from 
a point down the ravine, on top instead of at 
the bottom of the mountain wall. To get to this 
point you follow a path partly through a scrubby 
undergrowth, partly through dark pine reaches 
that make soft walking, and where the edge of 



LINVILLE FALLS 345 

the abyss is hidden by impenetrable rhododendron 
jungles. 

When you get to the open, rocky edge, you forget 
to look upstream to the fall, because of the wonder- 
ful blanket of trees that covers the opposite side of 
the narrow gorge. There is nothing like it: the walls 
seem made of foliage; the river far below runs 
through walls of living green, the crowns of superb 
forest trees that have managed to grow on what 
appears to be an upright cliff. You scarcely see the 
stems, only the green crowns of the hardwood trees 
blending their colors and their shapes with black 
interspersed shadows and interwoven with the dark- 
green of firs and the pale feathery effect of white 
pines, a marvelous tapestry wrought by the hand of 
nature. 

The steepness of the walls makes this growth of 
large trees the more remarkable, and your heart 
aches to recall that this whole gorge, one of the 
wonders of the mountains, has been bought by a 
lumber company. But looking at that tapestried 
wall falling sheer into the mountain torrent below, 
your sympathy takes a humorous leap to the side of 
the lumber company. Any tree they can get out of 
there they will have earned! Float the logs down- 
stream? " Not down that stream, unless you want to 
collect wood pulp somewhere beyond the foothills," 
a man who knows the gorge assures you. 

As you stand on the brink of the precipice you 
hear the confused thunder of the fall, that at this 
distance is a mere white ribbon hung from the end 



346 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

of the gorge. Its voice alone asserts Its Importance. 
And how insistent, how unbroken, how hard and 
tiresome it Is, a stupid unchanging roar, and blended 
with it Is an echo as unresonant and monotonous as 
itself. You find yourself listening for a change that 
never comes, except a loudening when the wind 
blows towards you. 

Irritated by the monotonous sounds you go on and 
around a curve out of sight of the vociferous ribbon. 
You seat yourself on a bed of dry, crackling moss 
that sends out waves of fragrance every time you 
move. Here the murmur of the far-down river 
blends with the dull roar of the cataract. This voice 
of the river Is full of modulations, the harsh sound 
of conflict has given place to gentler tones and the 
subdued roar of the fall itself now makes an agree- 
able accompaniment. 

To the song of the river is here also added voices 
from the forest, a sighing from the pine trees over- 
head, gentle rustlings from the crisp shrubs, a stac- 
cato chirp from the grass, a trill from some bird in 
the air, the clapping of a woodpecker on a dead tree, 
the drumming of some unknown creature, the tick- 
ing of a borer in a dead log. There are drowsy notes 
in this orchestra of the summer, with which the 
mighty perfume of the earth seems gradually to 
blend, and the warmth of the sun to mingle and hold 
all together in its tenuous threads — and — and — 
the sun conquers and you are sound asleep on the 
fragrant mosses, although It is mid-afternoon and 
you have planned a walk down that long ridge where 



LINVILLE FALLS 347 

the huckleberries grow. Thanks, oh, sun ! — there is 
something altogether lovely in falling thus asleep 
against one's judgment. 

There are "chimneys" over the edge of the preci- 
pice, whose tops have been conquered by brave little 
fir trees, and mossy things and a few flowers. And 
the precipice itself, do you realize that you are hang- 
ing your feet over the edge of the mountains — that 
the wall across the river belongs to the foothill form- 
ations? 

What a sweet place Is this edge of the high world ! 
On a mountain-top all things unite to smell sweet, 
and on none more than on this. Crisp moss crackles 
whenever you move, hard-leaved, red-stemmed 
huckleberries crowd the crevices of the rocks, and 
Dendrium buxophyllum, whose thick carpet is seen to 
be made of tiny imitations of rhododendron bushes 
shares the crannies with other lovely growths. But 
everywhere, and by far the choicest thing here, is a 
species of dwarf rhododendron with a charming 
architectural structure, the curving brown stems 
crowned with upward-pointing, curled little leaves, 
green above, the under side dusted with a rich brown 
bloom, the red-tinged veins and red petioles giving 
a red flush to the whole plant. Seed pods on these 
charming shrubs tell of bloom earlier in the season, 
and who would not be here then! It would be hard 
to Imagine a wilder, sweeter place than this edge, 
overlooking the gorge. To be here fills you with 
contentment. You Imagine you would like to stay 
with the rabbits the rest of the summer. 



348 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

The long and narrow Linville Mountain that 
borders the gorge on the west is not very well 
known to outsiders, but the people tell you of won- 
derful minerals there, among them large quantities 
of flexible sandstone. The Linville Country is very 
wild, but nowhere does the galax more riotously 
abound, this region being one of the favorite col- 
lecting grounds for this charming little plant. 



XXXII 

BLOWING ROCK 

THE noble Grandfather towers head and shoul- 
ders above the sea of mountains that surrounds 
it. It is the giant of the Blue Ridge, and in a sense 
dominates the whole Appalachian uplift, not be- 
cause of its superior height, — we know how many- 
higher mountains there are, — but because it is so 
commanding. For Nature fashions mountains as 
she does men, here and there one so striking that it 
becomes a landmark for its era. 

The Grandfather was believed to be the highest 
mountain in the eastern half of the United States 
until, not so very long ago, the surveyors came with 
their instruments and told the people there were 
forty mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee 
higher than the Grandfather. But of course nobody 
believed it : the people who had always lived under 
the shadow of the great mountain knew better than 
those men who flew in one day and out the next. 

The surveyors were doubtless right in a way, but 
theirs was that mere scientific accuracy that proves 
nothing but the fact. Beyond that lies the real truth 
of the matter; forty mountains may measure higher, 
but to those who know the Grandfather, not one is 
really quite so high. In 1794, the French botanist, 
Andr6 Michaux, wrote of the Grandfather Moun- 



350 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

tain, "Aug. 30, climbed to the summit of the highest 
mountain of all North America with my guide, and 
sang the Marseillaise Hymn, and cried, 'Long live 
America and the French Republic! Long live 
liberty!'" 

The mountain owes its supremacy not only to the 
comparative insignificance of its near neighbors, but 
to its position at the point where the Blue Ridge 
makes a sudden turn, swinging as it were about the 
Grandfather as about a pivot, the mountain rising 
in splendid sweep directly up from the abysmal 
depths of the foothills, with no intervening terraces. 
It has the effect of standing alone, its feet in the far- 
down valleys, its head in the clouds. 1 1 is also notable 
for its striking summit of bare rock as black as ink, 
a long, scalloped line as seen from Blowing Rock, a 
sharp tooth as seen coming towards it from Linville 
Falls. These bare, rocky summits are peculiar to 
the mountains of this region, as cliffy walls are of the 
Highlands country. None of these summits, however, 
can approach the Grandfather's black top in size 
and impressiveness, it being a landmark far and near. 

The most impressive view of the Grandfather is 
from Blowing Rock that lies some twenty miles to 
the east of it on a brink of the Blue Ridge, which 
there makes a drop of a thousand feet or more into 
the foothills below. From Blowing Rock to Tryon 
Mountain the Blue Ridge draws a deep curve half 
encircling a jumble of very wild rocky peaks and 
cliffs that belong to the foothill formations. Hence 
Blowing Rock, lying on one arm of a horseshoe of 



BLOWING ROCK 351 

which Tryon Mountain is the other arm, has the 
most dramatic outlook of any village in the moun- 
tains. Directly in front of it is an enormous bowl 
filled with a thousand tree-clad hills and ridges that 
become higher and wilder towards the encircling 
wall of the Blue Ridge, the conspicuous bare stone 
summits of Hawk's Bill and Table Rock Mountains 
rising sharp as dragon's teeth above the rest, while 
the sheer and shining face of the terrible Lost Cove 
cliffs, dropping into some unexplored ravine, come 
to view on a clear day. Far away, beyond this wild 
bowlful of mountains, one sometimes sees a faintly 
outlined dome, Tryon Mountain, under which on 
the other side one likes to remember lies Traumfest, 
Fortress of Dreams. 

Off to the left from Blowing Rock, seen between 
near green knobs, the shoreless sea of the lowlands 
reaches away to lave the edge of the sky. And look- 
ing to the right, there lies the calm and noble form of 
the Grandfather Mountain, its rocky top drawn in a 
series of curves against the western sky. Long spurs 
sweep down like buttresses to hold it. Trees clothe 
it as with a garment to where the black rock sur- 
mounts them. 

The view from Blowing Rock changes continually. 
The atmospheric sea that incloses mountain and 
valley melts the solid rocks into a thousand enchant- 
ing pictures. Those wild shapes in the great basin 
which at one time look so near, so hard, and so terri- 
ble, at another time recede and soften, their dark col- 
ors transmuted into the tender blue of the Blue 



352 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

Ridge, or again the basin is filled with dreamlike 
forms immersed in an exquisite sea of mystical light. 

Sometimes the Grandfather Mountain stands 
solidly out, showing In detail the tapestry of green 
trees that hangs over its slopes ; again it is blue and 
flat against the sky, or it seems made of mists and 
shadows. Sometimes the sunset glory penetrates, as 
it were, into the substance of the mountain, which 
looks translucent in the sea of light that contains it. 
As night draws on, it darkens into a noble silhouette 
against the splendor that often draws the curves of 
its summit in lines of fire. 

Blowing Rock at times lies above the clouds, with 
all the world blotted out excepting the Grand- 
father's summit rising out of the white mists. Some- 
times one looks out in the morning to see that great 
bowl filled to the brim with level cloud that reaches 
away from one's very feet in a floor so firm to the 
eye that one is tempted to step out on it. Presently 
this pure white, level floor begins to roll up into bil- 
lowy masses, deep wells open, down which one looks 
to little landscapes lying in the bottom, a bit of the 
lovely John's River Valley, a house and trees, per- 
haps. The well closes; the higher peaks begin to 
appear, phantom islands in a phantom sea ; the rest- 
less ocean of mists swells and rolls, now concealing, 
now revealing glimpses of the world under it. It 
breaks apart into fantastic forms that begin to glide 
up the peaks and mount above them like wraiths. 
The'sun darts sheafs of golden arrows in through the 
openings, and these in time slay the pale dragons of 



BLOWING ROCK 353 

the air, or drive them fleeing into the far blue caverns 
of the sky, and the world beneath is visible, only that 
where the John's River Valley ought to be there 
often remains a long lake of snowy drift. Sometimes 
the clouds blotting out the landscape break apart 
suddenly, the mountains come swiftly forth one 
after the other until one seems to be watching an act 
of creation where solid forms resolve themselves out 
of chaos. The peaceful John's River Valley, winding 
far below among the wild mountains, is like a glimpse 
into fairyland, and one has never ventured to go 
there for fear of dispelling the pleasing illusion. 

Near the village of Blowing Rock, at the begin- 
ning of those green knobs between which one looks 
to the lowlands, is a high cliff, the real Blowing Rock, 
so named because the rocky walls at this point form 
a flume through which the northwest wind sweeps 
with such force that whatever is thrown over the 
rock is hurled back again. It is said that there are 
times when a man could not jump over, so tremend- 
ous is the force of the wind. It is also said that vis- 
itors, having heard the legend of the rock, have been 
seen to stand there in a dead calm and throw over 
their possessions and watch them more in anger 
than in mirth as they, obedient to the law of gravity 
instead of that of fancy, disappeared beneath the 
tree- tops far below. 

Blowing Rock, four thousand feet above sea-level, 
is a wonderfully sweet place. The rose-bay and the 
great white Rhododendron maximum crowd against 
the houses and fill the open spaces, excepting where 



354 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

laurel and the flame-colored azaleas have planted 
their standards. And in their seasons the wild flow- 
ers blossom everywhere; also the rocks are covered 
with those crisp, sweet-smelling herbs that love 
high places, and sedums and saxifrages trim the 
crevices and the ledges. 

Blowing Rock is also noted for the great variety 
of new mushrooms that have been captured there, 
though one suspects this renown is due to the fact 
that the mushroom hunters happened to pitch their 
tents here instead of somewhere else. For other parts 
of the mountains can make a showing in mushrooms, 
too. 

It sometimes rains at Blowing Rock, but there are 
other times when one stands there on the brink in 
bright sunshine and sees, it may be, four showers 
descending on different parts of the country at once. 

Blowing Rock has long been a favorite summer 
resort, and at present is most easily reached by way 
of a drive twenty miles long, up the ridges from 
Lenoir, where a short branch railroad connects with 
the main line at Hickory. 

At Blowing Rock, the Blue Ridge, as so often hap- 
pens along its course, presents a steep wall towards 
the foothills, but keeps its elevation at the top, 
extending back in a wide plateau ; hence the country 
back of Blowing Rock and the Grandfather Moun- 
tain has a general elevation of from three thousand 
to four thousand feet; that is, the valley bottoms are 
thus high, which is what gives to this part of the 
country its peculiar charm. It is the walker's para- 



BLOWING ROCK 355 

dise, dellciously cool all summer, and totally free 
from any form of insect pest. South of the Grand- 
father the valley bottoms average about a thousand 
feet lower, although one there finds the highest 
mountains. But there are no finer views anywhere 
than from the Grandfather, the Beech, and other 
high summits of the Grandfather country. And here 
as elsewhere the people are so friendly and so good 
that one can if so inclined start out alone and with 
perfect safety spend weeks walking from place to 
place, stopping at the little villages for the night or 
where there are none, with whoever happens to be 
nearest when the sun goes down. 

Leaving Blowing Rock one day in mid-June, you 
perhaps will walk away to Boone, some ten miles 
distant, three miles of the way a lane close-hedged 
on either side with gnarled and twisted old laurel 
trees heavy-laden with bloom so that the crisp 
flower cups shower about you as you pass and the 
air is full of their bitter, tonic fragrance. Large 
rhododendrons stand among the laurel, but their 
great flower clusters are as yet imprisoned beneath 
the strong bud-scales. When the laurel is done 
blooming, you will perceive that you must come this 
way again for the sake of the rhododendrons. Little 
streams of crystal clearness come out from under the 
blossoming laurel, flash across the road, and disap- 
pear under the laurel on the other side. How sweet 
the air where all the odors of the forest are inter- 
woven with the bitter-sweet smell of the close-press- 
ing flowers! How the pulse quickens as one steps 



356 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

along. Is that a bird? Or is it your own heart sing- 
ing? 

Before the first freshness of that laurel-hedged 
road has begun to dim from familiarity, you emerge 
into the open where the view is of wide, rolling slopes, 
green hills and valleys dotted with roofs, and beyond 
these the great blue distant mountains soaring up 
into the sky. That steep hill to your left is bright- 
red with sorrel, a sorry crop for the farmer, but a 
lovely spot of color in the landscape. You climb 
up this sorrel-red hill to the top of Flat Top Moun- 
tain, up over the rough stones and the dark-red sorrel 
to where the view is wide and fine. But Flat Top 
Mountain offers you more than a view. It is noon 
when you get there, for you have not hurried, but 
have stopped every moment to smell or to see, or 
just to breathe and breathe as though you could thus 
fill your bodily tissues with freshness and fragrance 
to last into your remotest life. As you climb up 
Flat Top, you detect a fragrance that does not come 
from the flowers, a warm, delicious fragrance that 
makes you look eagerly at the ground. Seeing 
nothing, you go on half disappointed, half buoyant 
with the certainty of success — ah, it comes again, 
that delicious warm fragrance. You abandon your- 
self to primitive instincts and trusting your senses 
turn about and walk straight to where the ground is 
red with ripe strawberries. You sit down on the 
warm grass and taste the delectable fruit. A bird is 
singing from a bush as though sharing in your 
pleasure. When you have gathered the best within 



BLOWING ROCK 357 

reach, you lie back and watch the clouds sailing Hke 
white swans across the sky. Then you take out the 
bread you have brought, the most deHcious bread 
ever baked, for it has in some magical way acquired 
a flavor of blossoming laurel, and rippling brooks, 
and blue sky, and the joy of muscles in motion, of 
deep-drawn breath, of the lassitude of delicious 
exercise, with a lingering flavor of the spicy berries 
whose fragrance is in the air about you. Such bread 
as this is never eaten within the walls of a house. 
And then you rest on the warm hillside fanned by 
the cool breeze, for no matter how hot the summer 
sun, there is always a cool breeze in the high world 
at the back of the Grandfather. Before starting on, 
you must taste again of the exquisite feast spread 
for you and the birds, whose wings you hear as they 
come and go, fearless and ungrudging, for there is 
enough for all. 

Farther along on the mountain stands an old 
weather-boarded house whence you see Boone in the 
distance lying so sweetly among its mountains. A 
path here leads you down to a deserted cabin in a 
lovely hollow. That well-worn path at the doorstep 
leads to the spring only a few steps away, such a 
spring as one is always looking for and always finding 
at the back of the Grandfather. Its water is icy cold 
and it is walled about with moss-covered, fern-grown 
stones. This cabin in the lovely hollow, with its ice- 
cold spring, the surrounding fruit trees, the signs 
of flowers once cultivated, gives you a strange im- 
pulse to stop here, like a bird that has found its nest, 



358 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

but you go on along a woodsy by-road whose banks 
are covered with pale-green ferns, and where the 
large spiraea in snowy bloom stands so close as almost 
to form a hedge. The velvety dark-green leaves of 
wild hydrangea crowd everywhere, its broad flat 
heads of showy buds just ready to open. Enormous 
wild gooseberries invite you to taste and impishly 
prick your tongue if you do. The blackberries make 
a great show, but are not yet ripe. The roadside 
now and then is bordered with ripe strawberries. 
This shady way brings you again into the "main 
leadin' road" you left some distance back when you 
climbed the sorrel-red hill to the top of Flat Top 
Mountain, and which now also has its wealth of 
flowers, among which the pure-white tapers of the 
galax shine out from the woods, while here and there 
a service tree drops coral berries at your feet. 

Soon now you cross the deep, wide ford of Mill 
River on a footbridge, substantial and with a hand- 
rail, and where you stop of course to look both up 
and down the stream overhung with foliage, and just 
beyond which is a pretty house with its front yard 
full of roses. It is only two miles from here to Boone, 
and you breathe a sigh of regret at being so near the 
end of the day's walk; yet when you find yourself 
in Mrs. Coffey's little inn with its bright flowers you 
are glad to sit down and think over the events of the 
day. 

Boone, at the foot of Howard Knob, is a pretty 
snuggle of houses running along a single street. 
Boone says it is the highest county seat in the 



BLOWING ROCK 359 

United States, and that Daniel Boone once stayed 
in a cabin near here, whence its name. However all 
that may be, the lower slopes of Howard Knob are 
pleasantly cultivated and valleys run up into the 
mountains in all directions, as though on purpose 
to make a charming setting for Boone the county 
seat. 

That first visit to Boone ! — what a sense of peace 
one had in remembering that the nearest railroad 
was thirty miles away; and then, — what is that? — 
a telephone bell rings its insistent call and Boone is 
talking with Blowing Rock, or Lenoir, or New York 
City, or Heaven knows where! For though this 
part of the country was the last to get into railroad 
communication with the outer world, it was by no 
means the last to grasp the opportunities within 
reach. 

With what delicious weariness one sinks to sleep 
after the day's walk over the hills! Your eyes seem 
scarcely to have closed when a loud noise wakens 
you with a start — what is it? Nothing excepting 
that the day's work has begun, broad daylight flood- 
ing in at the window. Breakfast is ready, cofifee, 
cornbread, fish from some near sparkling stream, 
rice, hot biscuit, eggs, wild-plum sauce, honey and 
wild strawberries — you can take your choice or 
eat them all. And what a pleasant surprise to find 
every thing seasoned with the wonderful appetite of 
childhood, that reappears on such occasions as this! 

Your body seems borne on wings, so light it feels 
as you leave the inn and again take to the road. 



360 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

Back to Blowing Rock? No, indeed ; not even though 
you could return, part way at least, by another road. 
The Wanderlust is on you — the need of walking 
along the high valleys among the enchanted moun- 
tains. That seems the thing in life worth doing. As 
you leave Boone you notice a meadow white with 
ox-eye daisies, and among them big red clover-heads, 
and, if you please, clumps of black-eyed Susans — 
for all the world like a summer meadow in the New 
England hills. Ripe strawberries hang over the edge 
of the road. 

From Boone to Valle Crucis you must go the 
longest way, for so you get the best views, the people 
tell you. And so you go a day's walk to Valle Crucis, 
where the Episcopal settlement lies in the fine green 
little valley. 

From Valle Crucis to Banner Elk, under the Beech 
Mountain, is another day's walk, when again you 
take the longest way, up Dutch Creek to see the 
pretty waterfall there, and where the clematis is a 
white veil over the bushes, and up the steep road by 
Hanging Rock where the gold tree grows. This is an 
oak, known far and near because its top is always 
golden yellow. The leaves come out yellow in the 
spring, remain so all summer, and in the fall would 
doubtless turn yellow if they were not already that 
color. The people say there is a pot of gold buried 
at the roots, but this pleasant fancy has not taken 
a serious enough hold to menace the life of the tree. 

Stopping at a picturesque, old-time log house to 
rest, a little girl invites you to go to the top of Hang- 



BLOWING ROCK 361 

ing Rock, which invitation you gladly accept, there- 
by getting one of the most enjoyable walks of the 
summer, your little guide telling you all the way 
about the flowers and the birds, and stopping under 
an overhanging cliff with great secrecy to show you 
a round little bird's nest with eggs in it cleverly 
hidden in the moss. One suspects it was the chance 
to show this treasure that led the child to propose 
the long climb to the top of the mountain. The 
gooseberries of Hanging Rock are without prickles, 
perhaps because the wild currants growing there 
have stolen them. Imagine prickly currants ! There 
is plenty of galax on Hanging Rock, and mosses and 
sedums and all the other growths that make moun- 
tain-tops so agreeable. The top of Hanging Rock is 
a slanting ledge, from which the mountain gets its 
name. At Banner Elk you will want to stay awhile, 
it is so pretty, and you will also want to climb the 
beautiful Beech Mountain with its grassy spaces 
and its charming beech groves. 

From Banner Elk you take the short walk over to 
" Galloways," close under the shadow of the Grand- 
father, and from here the long and beautiful walk 
down the Watauga River at the base of the Grand- 
father, then along the ridges back to Blowing Rock, 
watching as you go details of the mountain beneath 
whose northern front you are passing. The open 
benches, the rocky bluffs, and abrupt, tree-clad walls, 
of this side of the mountain, which we call the back 
of the Grandfather, are not impressive like those 
long southern slopes sweeping from a summit of a 



362 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

little less than six thousand feet down into the foot- 
hills. For the mountain on this side is stopped by 
the high plateau from which it rises. Yet it is good 
to be at the back of the Grandfather. From the 
Watauga road we see the profile from which the 
mountain is said to have received its name, although 
one gets a better and far more impressive view of it 
from a certain point on the mountain itself. 

And so you return to Blowing Rock after days of 
wandering, only to rest awhile and start again, gain- 
ing endurance with every trip until the ten miles* 
walk that cost you a little weariness becomes the 
twenty miles' walk that costs you none. You cannot 
tire of the road, for every mile brings new sights, 
new sounds, new fragrances, new friends, new flowers, 
one charm of walking here being the endless variety. 
No two days are alike, each has its own pleasant 
adventures. 



XXXIII 

THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN 

DOWN in the plains and in all the cities it is 
August. Up here it is some celestial month not 
mentioned in any calendar. For we are camping at 
the back of the Grandfather Mountain; our tents 
are pitched on a slope that is separated from the 
base of the mountain by a narrow, wedge-like little 
valley down which ripples the silvery beginning of 
the Watauga River. To be at the beginning of a 
river is guaranty of many pleasant things. Opposite 
us the mountain rises, steep, rough, and covered 
with beautiful growths. It is so near we can see the 
shades of green and even make out the forms of the 
tree-tops. On its side the clouds form, welling up 
as from a caldron of the storm gods. We are shut in 
by tree-clad slopes, excepting towards the east, where 
the view opens down the valley upon distant blue 
hills. 

Ripe blackberries hang over the roadside, and the 
bushes growing about the rocks in an abandoned 
field near us are loaded with extra good fruit. There 
is a certain pleasure in gathering one's food from the 
bushes; one is apt to gather so much more than 
bodily sustenance. You think of things in a berry 
patch, for instance, that never come to you any- 
where else ; you solve the problems of the universe 



364 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

differently. In a brier patch you think in cycles and 
flavor your food with dashes of cosmic philosophy. 
And there is profit as well as pleasure in gather- 
ing your food from the bushes. At the back of the 
Grandfather, berries are important in our daily fare. 
We eat them as they grow, and also prepared in 
many ways. We make discoveries in culinary aesthe- 
tics as well as in cosmic philosophy, dealing with 
blackberries. You have never really tasted a black- 
berry pudding, for instance, until you have stood on 
a stone in the Watauga River, stripped the heavy, 
shining clusters of ripe fruit into your tin "bucket," 
carried them back to camp, and made your pudding; 
for your true blackberry pudding must be flavored 
with warm sunshine glinting between green leaves, 
the sparkle of running water, and the remembered 
fragrances of herbs and trees and bushes, with mem- 
ories of pleasant reveries, and it does it no harm to 
be spiced with scratches. 

There is a certain sensuous pleasure to be derived 
from the scratches of a berry patch. The hot rip of 
the thorn through the skin, the crimson line of blood 
that appears at the surface, but does not overflow, 
the tingling sensation that courses over your whole 
body for a moment, — for this you willingly endure 
the smart that comes for hours afterwards whenever 
your wounded members touch anything. Moreover, 
you would endure the scratches so soon forgotten for 
the memory that lasts of the feel of the sun, of the 
beleaguering fragrances, and for the rich booty you 
carry home. 



THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN 365 

And your blackberry pudding, to be perfect, must 
be eaten in a tent, or sitting on a rock by a brookside, 
or in a shakedown bower under a big tree. Our 
dining-room is a bower roofed with evergreen boughs. 
Out through the open front, through the overhang- 
ing ends of the evergreen boughs, we see the top of 
the Grandfather Mountain and the clouds that come 
and go over it. 

The country people bring us food, apples, butter, 
eggs, and milk. The butter comes out of a tall 
earthenware churn whose dasher is moved up and 
down by a mountain friend whom we see sitting in 
the doorway of her house busily churning, with a 
background of the black interior in which are faintly 
outlined the kitchen utensils. Under the slopes of 
the Grandfather we go down the valley to pictur- 
esque houses shaded by fruit trees. 

Sometimes we spend the day on the Grandfather 
Mountain and such days cannot come too often. 
Sometimes we walk over the gap under Hanging 
Rock, or we cross over to Banner Elk, or go down to 
Linville, and wherever we walk the air stimulates like 
wine and the wayside is abloom with summer flowers, 
among them goldenrods and asters for memories of 
life in the North, and the hillsides are solid masses of 
white bloom, or they are yellow or pink with flowers, 
— but the slopes along the northern bank of the 
Watauga River are distinct in your mind from every- 
thing else. In the late summer they may be a mere 
tangle of flowers and plumy grasses, but did you not 
come along here once and discover them carpeted 



366 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

with strawberries? You could not then walk over 
them without dyeing your feet in the juice of the 
ripe fruit. Above the strawberries red-clover was 
thickly blooming, and above the clover ox-eye 
daisies. The odor of this field was perceptible before 
you otherwise noticed it — a chorus of sweet smells 
seemed shouting to you to come up. As soon as the 
land is left untilled about here, wild strawberries 
rush in as pink azaleas do about Traumfest. You 
can buy them for five cents a gallon, but you will be 
foolish to do that when you can stain your own 
fingers with their juices, and fill your tissues with 
sunshine and fresh air and fragrances out on the 
slopes when strawberries are ripe. 

Shading our camp is the remains of a grove, for 
most of the trees lie on the ground, bleached skele- 
tons, which, however, prove to be a blessing rather 
than a misfortune for us. For towards night the air 
grows cold — and then comes the crowning pleasure 
of the day : a royal camp-fire suddenly blazes forth. 

We have a perfect firemaker in the mountain man 
who lives in the canvas-covered wagon that brought 
us here, bag and baggage. Every mountain man is 
a perfect firemaker, though he is by no means a fire 
worshiper. He makes his fire for homely uses, not 
for any spiritual cause such as we imagine kindled 
those fires of early man in the Far East, fires that yet 
burn in poetry to warm the heart even at this dis- 
tant time. The mountain man always starts his fire 
with a stick whittled into a brush. He scorns paper 
even when he can get it, seeming to whittle into his 



THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN 367 

brush a sort of magic, for try as you will you cannot 
whittle a brush that will burn like his. It never fails, 
and he uses only one match. Our back-log is the 
trunk of an ash tree seasoned to perfection. Against 
this is laid various kinds of wood, each kind giving 
forth its own flames and its own sparks ; for trees do 
not all burn alike. The oak, for instance, expresses 
itself as distinctly in its flames as in its leaves and 
fruit, or in its voice in the wind, or its color or the 
odors it sends forth. Even the different species of 
oak burn differently. One can sit in reverie before 
the calm blaze of a white-oak fire, but your Spanish 
oak explodes and sputters and shoots out sparks 
in a way to induce anything but reverie. Hickory 
burns with a steadfast glow, but the unstable chest- 
nut pops and sputters worse, if anything, than 
Spanish oak. Your firemaker says it is linwood that 
sends out those fascinating broods of fiery dragons 
that leap with lashing tails high into the air. 

There are some things one would like to know 
about trees. One would like to know from the flames 
what tree is burning, how old it is, and what have 
been its experiences in life, as well as how to tell, by 
the sound of the wind among the leaves, beneath 
what tree one is passing, and by the smell of the 
opening buds as you go along what trees are about 
you. 

As we lie on the fragrant earth watching the flames 
and the fiery serpents ascend into the black vault 
above, this seems to us no common fire, but rather 
the sudden rush into elemental freedom of those 



368 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

patient giants of the forest that have Iain here wait- 
ing for us to come and free them. 

Sometimes a bat flies across the fire, and one night 
a dark toad was discovered sitting close to your ear. 
But he had nothing important to say. He sat still 
for a while, his eyes glistening in the firelight that 
seemed to fascinate him. Then he attempted to 
enter the heaven thus suddenly opened to his imag- 
ination. In pursuit of his dream he went straight 
into the fire. What he expected to find, who can 
say? And what a disillusionment it must have been 
when he found himself sitting on a red-hot fagot ! He 
made a quick backward movement, to be swept 
into safety by a merciful human hand. If a toad had 
the wings of a moth, it would doubtless fly into the 
fire in the same way. A toad followed a lantern a 
long distance one night. It is impossible not to like 
the toad when you once really know it. Besides its 
friendly manners it has the most beautiful eyes in 
the world. Those eyes so soft and bright betoken a 
good heart. What is the old fable of the toad wear- 
ing a jewel in its head? The truth of that is, the toad 
wears two jewels, and they are its lovely golden- 
brown eyes. 

As the fire dies down, talking ceases, the black trees 
come out more plainly, and the head of the Grand- 
father wears a crown of stars where great Scorpio 
lies along the sky. 

If you chance to waken in the night, out through 
the triangular space between the open tent-flaps 
you see the slopes of the Grandfather bathed in 



THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN 369 

moonlight, or dimly looming in the faint light of the 
stars, or shrouded in white mists like a ghost. One 
sleeps soundly in the keen, thin air and at daybreak 
wakens, not slowly but all at once with a sense of 
buoyancy in every member. How the cold spring 
water stings the skin and makes it glow suddenly 
hot ! And as we step out of doors we see the moun- 
tain emerging from its robe of white mists, its colors 
fresh and fine as though it, too, had slept well. 

Oftener than anywhere else we go up on the moun- 
tain. One can easily, by jumping from stone to stone, 
cross the Watauga's pretty rippling water, where 
the trout hide. Some of our little party may stop to 
fish, and that is good for those of us who come home 
hungry at night — and how hungry we do come 
home ! — but the Watauga has better uses than fish- 
ing, an occupation apt to absorb one's attention too 
closely, withdrawing it from matters more import- 
ant than trout. There is a matter of real interest, 
however, connected with fishing in this region. For 
it was either here or in the Linville that we saw the 
sacred piscatorial art pursued with woolen mittens 
instead of rod and fly. Thus equipped you wade in 
and grab the fish where they lie in the clear pools. 

The path beyond the river is cut through the dense 
kalmia and Rhododendron maximum that make a 
wide band along the base of the mountain, then it 
leads up and up and up through the more open 
forest. There is no sweeter walk in the world than 
that up Grandfather Mountain, where the path 
winds among the trees, a canopy of leaves screening 



370 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

the sky, the forest shutting from view the outer 
world. Once, there were large wild cherry trees on 
the slopes of the Grandfather, but the wood being 
valuable, — it is what the people call mahogany, — 
there are only saplings left, and a few patriarchs 
that, though useless for lumber, give an air of dignity 
to the forest in company with the clear gray shafts 
of the tulip-trees, the grand old chestnuts, the oaks, 
the maples, beeches, birches, ashes, and lindens that 
mingle their foliage with that of the pines and 
spruces. 

You pass beside or under large detached boulders 
covered with saxifrages, sedums, mosses, and ferns, 
and in whose crevices mountain-ash trees and 
twisted hemlocks have taken root as though for pur- 
poses of decoration ; and in the damp hollows away 
from the path great jack- vines hang from the tree- 
tops. The rock ledges sometimes make caves where 
bears were wont to live, for the Grandfather was 
once a famous place for bears. Squirrels still "use 
on the mountain, ' ' as the people say, and a ' ' boomer ' ' 
will be apt to bark down at you as you go along. 
You hear the waters of a stream in the ravine below, 
and here and there you cross a natural garden of 
"balimony" or some other precious herb that the 
people gather in the season. About two thirds of the 
way up you take a path that branches off to the left 
and leads you over the mossy rocks to an open place 
on the edge of a gorge where looking off you see the 
clear-cut profile of the Grandfather sculptured on the 
edge of a rocky bluff, the bushy hair that rises from 




THE GRANDFATHER PROFILE 



THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN 371 

the forehead consisting of fir trees that when whit- 
ened by the winter snow give a venerable appear- 
ance to the stone face. Somewhat above this profile 
from this point is also visible another, with smaller 
and rounder features, which of course is the Grand- 
mother. 

Returning to the main path and continuing the 
ascent, the way grows wilder and if possible sweeter. 
One has a sense of rising spiritually as well as phys- 
ically. At the base of a high cliff, framed in foliage 
and crowned with the rosy-flowered Rhododendron 
Catawbiense, gushes out the famous Grandfather 
Spring that is only ten degrees above freezing 
throughout the summer. Up to this point there is a 
bridle path ; beyond here it is necessary to walk. The 
rose-bay still in bloom clings to the rocks, in whose 
crevices little dwarf trees have taken root along with 
the mosses, ferns, and saxifrages. 

The path gets very steep and rocky. You are now 
among the balsam firs, those trees to name which is 
to name a perfume, and you go climbing up over 
their strong red roots. The pathway becomes a 
staircase winding about moss-trimmed rocks in 
whose crevices are tiny contorted balsams like Japan- 
ese flower-pot trees. Enormous coal-black lichens 
hang from the cliffs and the ground is softly carpeted 
with mossy growths and oxalis, out from whose 
pretty pale leaves look myriads of pink-and-white 
blossoms. Long after the Rhododendron Catawbiense 
is done blooming below, one finds it in its prime on 
the high peaks of the Grandfather. 



372 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

Up among the balsam firs and about the rocks 
grow large sour gooseberries and enormous sweet 
huckleberries, and it was here we found a new and 
delicious fruit. The bushes crowding the woods in 
places were loaded with bright red globes the size of 
a small cherry, each dangling from a slender stem. 
These delightful berries were mere skins of juice, 
tiny wine-bottles full of refreshment for a summer 
day. The natives were afraid to eat them, but hav- 
ing decided that they were cousins to the huckle- 
berries, we ventured, and added these jocund fruits 
to the many attractions that called us again and 
again to the top of the Grandfather. One wishes it 
could truthfully be said that these berries grow only 
on the Grandfather Mountain, but the fact is we 
discovered them on other mountains, though never 
much below an altitude of six thousand feet. Finding 
them thus among the mossy rocks up in the sweet, 
keen air on the summit of our favorite mountain 
gave them a charm that was enhanced by the fact 
that they belonged to us and the birds. Now we 
shall have to share them with every passer-by, for 
when we ate and survived, our mountain friends 
ventured to partake, and doubtless they will spread 
the news that you can eat with impunity the juicy 
red berries on top of Grandfather Mountain. One 
woman even took home a pailful and made from 
them the most exquisite jelly imaginable, ruby-red, 
clear, sparkling, and with a delicate wild-flower 
flavor that made one think of the sweet things 
growing on the mountain-top. We named them 



THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN 373 

"Our Berries," and with them quenched our thirst 
instead of carrying water when we went above the 
spring. 

Up through the spruces and the balsams you 
mount in the resplendent day, lingering at every 
step. The trees below you are sending up songs as 
the wind sweeps over them, the balsams about and 
below you are pouring a vast cloud of fragrance into 
the blue bowl of the sky, and you yourself someway 
seem to be a part of the general rapture. 

Thus climbing up through the wonderful day, 
you reach the summit, "Calloway's High Peak," 
the highest point on the mountain, but from which 
one cannot command the circle of the horizon. It is 
necessary to get the view from two points, which is 
all the better. The rocks at the lookout towards the 
south being covered with "heather," one can lie on a 
delightful couch studded all over with little white 
starry flowers, to rest and receive the view. Lying 
thus on the earth, warmed by the sun and cooled by 
the fragrant breeze, one looks over a sea of blue 
mountains that breaks against a bluer sky. Out of 
the sea of mountains rises many a well-known form, 
among them the big beech with its memories of 
lovely pastures and groves of beech trees, for it is 
needless to say that a mountain of beeches is a sort of 
enchanted place. In the distance lies White Top on 
whose summit three states meet, a heaven for the 
moonshiner, one should think, if he is able to take 
advantage of the situation. 

Leaving this place and walking on to the point 



374 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

that looks to the south, one shares the feelings and 
almost the faith of Michaux. The view is very im- 
pressive, because of that steep descent of the moun- 
tain into the foothills, the long spurs sweeping down 
in fine lines to a great depth. Above them one looks 
off over scores of noble forms overlapping and blend- 
ing in the hazy distance. The Black Mountains 
stand forth very high and very blue, and beyond 
them, among the many familiar forms, are distin- 
guished what one supposes to be the faint blue line 
of the Smokies — or is it the nearer Balsams? 

The greater mass of the Grandfather lies on the 
south side, where those long buttresses sweep down 
into the valleys of the Piedmont region, glorious 
ridges with broad bald shoulders where cattle pas- 
ture and rhododendrons, laurel, and azaleas stand 
in regal beauty. Between the long spurs, as well as 
between the many smaller ridges, glance rivulets 
that finally become the John's River, whose valley 
one sees from Blowing Rock winding so prettily 
between the foothills. 

Sooner or later you will find your way to McRae's, 
which is to the south side of the Grandfather what 
Calloway's is to the north side, a farmhouse where 
one can stay awhile. There is a trail over the end of 
the Grandfather by which you can go directly from 
Calloway's to McRae's, but to strike this trail you 
have to walk down the Linville River, which, rising 
in an open space but a stone's throw from the head 
of the Watauga, flows in quite the opposite direc- 
tion, and through so narrow a pass that you have to 



THE GRANDFATHER^ MOUNTAIN 375 

keep crossing and recrossing it, no small matter in a 
season of rains. For there are no foot-logs at all. 
Evidently you are not expected to walk along this 
road, and if you do you must cross the river, 
jumping from rock to rock as best you can. But 
the Linville is one of the streams you are glad 
to know through all its sparkling length, from 
the spring behind the Grandfather to where it 
escapes in wild glee through the gorge below the 
falls. 

There are peacocks at McRae's, and Mr. McRae 
has not forgotten how to play on the bagpipes those 
ancient airs that have so stirred the blood of his race. 
One of the pleasant memories of this side of the 
Grandfather is Mr. McRae walking up and down 
before the house playing the pipes. But you will 
have to coax him to do it. 

McRae's stands on the Yonahlossee Road that 
connects Linville, just below the mountain, with 
Blowing Rock, — Yonahlossee, trail of the bear, — 
but one need fear no bear on the Yonahlossee Road 
to-day. From McRae's there is a path up the Grand- 
father, not to Calloway's High Peak, but to another 
peak reached by a very sweet climb through the 
balsams, which, in all this region, are smaller and 
more companionable than the straight giants of the 
Black Mountains, these of the Grandfather being 
twisted and friendly and profoundly fragrant. From 
this peak one can see in all directions, excepting 
where one of the Grandfather's black summits 
obstructs the view. 



376 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

It is the lichens growing on the rocks that give so 
sombre an appearance to the top of the Grandfather, 
those big, black lichens with loose and curled-up 
edges. Grandfather's black, rocky top is eight miles 
long, and once Mr. Calloway and our friend the post- 
master — he who brought us our mail, walking four 
miles every day for the pleasure of doing a kindness — 
and the men of the camping party blazed out a rude 
trail so that we could all take that wonderful knife- 
edge walk up in the sky over the peaks of the Grand- 
father; Indian ladders — that is, a tall tree trunk 
from which the branches have been lopped, leaving 
protruding ends for steps — helping us up otherwise 
insurmountable cliffs. It was the great event of the 
season, a very wonderful walk, and one seldom taken 
by anybody. 

The Yonahlossee Road ought to be followed early 
in the summer. For then the meadowy tops of the 
long spurs are like noble parks created for man's 
pleasure. The Rhododendron Catawbiense lies massed 
about in effective groups and covered with rosy 
bloom, beyond which one looks out over a wide 
landscape of mountains and clouds. From these 
open, flower-decked spaces the road passes into the 
shadowy forest, to emerge upon a bushy slope where 
blazing reaches of flame-colored azaleas astound 
your senses. There are other flowers along the way, 
but you scarcely see them, intoxicated as you are 
with the glory of the rhododendrons, and after them 
the azaleas, for these marvelous growths almost 
never blossom within sight of each other. You would 




THE YONAHLOSSEE ROAD 



THE GRANDFATHER MOUNTAIN 377 

say they know, like ladies at a ball, how Important it 
is to avoid each other's colors. 

Under the trees along the roadside the earth is 
covered with a superb carpet of large and handsome 
galax leaves, for the Grandfather is distinguished 
by the great beauty and abundance of its galax. 
Laurel, too, claims standing-room on the side of the 
grand old mountain, and here as elsewhere one no- 
tices the apparent capriciousness of the laurel, which 
forms an impenetrable jungle for long stretches 
and then stops short, not a laurel bush to be seen for 
some distance, when with equal suddenness it ap- 
pears again. 

The splendid slopes of the Grandfather are en- 
chanting also when autumn colors them, — deep 
red huckleberry balds, trees wreathed in crimson 
woodbine, vivid sassafras, tall gold and crimson and 
scarlet forest trees — it seems more like the brilliant 
display of a Northern forest. You would say the 
outpouring of fragrance must pass with the summer. 
Not so. As you walk among the trees in their thin, 
bright attire you have a feeling of their friendliness. 
The forest, as it were, breathes upon you, you are 
drowned in the sweetness of resinous perfumes that 
distil from a thousand pines, firs, and hemlocks. 
When the leaves of the trees are growing scarce and 
changing to duller hues, into the open spaces witch- 
hazel weaves its gold-wreathed wands and brightens 
the woods like sunshine. 

Turning to the right from the Yonahlossee Road, 
a short distance up from McRae's, you walk along 



378 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

under the chestnut trees just beginning to open 
their burrs, away from the Grandfather out over a 
beautiful spur that ends in an open, rounded sum- 
mit. The road to this place has side paths that lead 
you to high cliffs, whence you look off towards 
Blowing Rock, and where the sweetest of mountain 
growths cling to the crevices and drape the edges 
of all the rocks. For some reason the trees here are 
small, the chestnuts being not much larger than 
bushes, but the nuts are proportionately large, the 
largest nuts one ever saw on our native chestnut 
trees, and they are peculiarly sweet, again a hint to 
the fruit-makers who from this could doubtless 
create a nut as large as the chestnuts of France and 
as sweet as those of America, The summit of this 
little mountain of the large chestnuts is one of your 
favorite places to go for a day of rest and contempla- 
tion. It is a lovely, soothing place, as it ought to be, 
for it is the Grandmother Mountain. 



XXXIV 

THE HOLIDAY OF DREAMS 

BACK to Traumfest one comes, after each expe- 
dition out over the mountains. And one day 
the truth dawns upon you, — the title so arbitrarily 
bestowed upon Traumfest belongs to the whole 
region. Yes, this whole stretch of enchanting and 
enchanted mountains is the "Holiday of Dreams." 
And thinking back over those days of happy wan- 
dering, how many interesting places appear before 
the mind's eye that have not been so much as men- 
tioned in this book; how many lovely scenes have 
been witnessed, how many pleasant adventures 
encountered that have not been recorded, how many 
flowers have blossomed without mention, how many 
birds have sung unchronicled, how many quaint 
native phrases have been passed over in silence ! 

And as the years have slipped by, with what pangs 
of regret one has watched the passing of the primi- 
tive life of the mountains, and with what pleasure 
one reverts to those old days when everybody was 
uncomfortable and everybody happy. How many 
to-day, seeing the train with its line of Pullman 
sleepers come in on time at Traumfest, remember 
those days when the track went only as far as Hen- 
dersonville, and when, with the old-time courtesy of 
the Southern man, the conductor politely stopped 



38o THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

his two cars on request of any lady passenger who 
wished to gather a few wild flowers, willing to please 
so long as he could get in before dark. 

Since then, like a cosmic spider, the Southern 
Railroad has woven its meshes below the Carolina 
mountains on either side, and thrown its steel threads 
across them in several places, while now yet another 
line is being surveyed across the Blue Ridge to the 
north of Tryon Mountain, up the Broad River 
Valley, past Chimney Rock, and on as far as Bat 
Cave where it follows a devious route of escape by 
way of the Pigeon River Gorge. The Blue Ridge 
that looks so ethereal in the distance presents almost 
insuperable obstacles to the civil engineer, as do also 
the guarding ramparts of the valleys of the plateau, 
but the great transcontinental line, that is to reach 
from the Atlantic coast of North Carolina to Seattle 
on the Pacific, will doubtless find a way. 

Occasionally one sees an old-fashioned, boat- 
shaped wagon covered with a canopy of white cloth, a 
survivor of those trains that crossed from Tennessee 
to the Carolinas over the hard-won roads where no 
longer move trains of wagons, droves of cattle, hogs, 
and sheep, all these now passing over another form 
of highway behind the iron horse that pulls the con- 
tents of a hundred caravans in one load. 

And what means that sudden appearance of two 
dozen automobiles on Traumfest's modest "Trade 
Street" the other day? Two or three of these won- 
ders of the age belong to people living here, and those 
others came on a mission, which was, to further their 



THE HOLIDAY OF DREAMS 381 

own interests by making plans for the extension of 
the road that brought them here. They came up 
from Spartanburg, a sign of the new era that has 
dawned to transform the mountains. For already 
from Spartanburg there comes a wide, new road, a 
great red serpent whose head is pointed up the Paco- 
let Valley, and that will never stop until it has coiled 
and writhed its way over the helpless rampart of the 
Blue Ridge to its goal — in Asheville? No, not in 
Asheville, but through it and on and down out into 
the now teeming Western world beyond. The auto- 
mobile, which is doing for this country what the 
military power has so long been doing for Europe, 
networking it with perfect roads, will soon speed 
from Jacksonville, Florida, across the plains, the 
foothills, and the astonished mountains, down to 
Knoxville, Tennessee, over the broad highway now 
being constructed for that purpose. 

Wherever you go the portable sawmill is ahead of 
you, the temporary railway of the lumberman dis- 
dainfully penetrating the "inaccessible" places. 
And wherever you go the people of the mountains 
are waking up out of the care-free, simple life of the 
past into the wearing, tumultuous life of the present, 
and that is what causes those pangs of regret. The 
comforts that are pouring in are not in themselves 
regrettable; it is only the price one has to pay for 
them, the exchange of Arcadia for Gotham. 

Social transitions are always trying, and perhaps 
peculiarly so here, where the awakening conscious- 
ness suddenly sees the glitter of the prize without 



382 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

understanding the law of exchange. But the people 
are sound. To native intelligence they add a rude 
but strong sense of honor and of justice which with 
the passing of time will undoubtedly mould them 
happily into the new conditions. 

The world is coming ; the old-time mountaineer is 
going, but he will never be wholly metamorphosed 
so long as human nature remains fundamentally 
unchanged and the sun continues to exact obedience 
to its great command, "Thou shalt not hurry." And 
so long as human nature remains as it is, the new- 
comer will in time have the sharp edge of his "ambi- 
tion" dulled by the same resistless force: "Thou 
shalt not hurry" applies to all alike. 

And now, into the increasing turmoil of many 
interests there comes like an emblem of peace the 
great Appalachian Park, that, lying in calm expanse 
over the slopes of the Blue Ridge and the Smoky 
Mountains, shall save forever for the happiness of 
the people a part of this glorious wilderness. With 
the park will come a new world to the mountains. 
Not only will railroads and highways open up all 
parts of the country, but an increasing number of 
those people who need to rest or to play will find 
their way here, and build themselves homes. Sum- 
mer homes for the Southerner, winter homes for the 
Northerner, all-the-year-round homes for many 
from both sections are already growing up in the 
laurel thickets and under the trees. 

Those who desire an estate in the forest primeval 
can no longer, it is true, buy a whole mountain cov- 



THE HOLIDAY OF DREAMS 383 

ered with virgin forest for a few cents an acre, as was 
the case not so long ago, when "inaccessible" locali- 
ties were looked upon as encumbered rather than 
benefited by their burden of big trees. But whoever 
wants a mountain-side, with a laurel-bordered 
stream and a wide view of enchanting heights, can 
have it, and if all the forest is no longer primeval it is 
nevertheless charming. The half-grown trees and 
the saplings, with the few large trees that generally 
manage to escape destruction, afford a starting- 
point for the creation of delightful landscape effects. 
And although the mountains have no great agri- 
cultural value, frequent statements to the contrary 
notwithstanding, they are capable of responding 
cordially to him who, desiring a garden, a fruit 
orchard, or a vineyard, goes about it in the right 
way. New methods will doubtless increase the 
bearing capacity of the earth, but when all is said 
neither soil nor climate is as well suited to the pro- 
duction of food crops for man's needs as they are for 
the production of laurel and azaleas for his pleasure. 
Where the mountains stand supreme is in their 
gracious climate that seems to caress the world- 
weary; in that and in the subtler beauties of nature 
that everywhere cover them as with a garment. The 
chance to build a castle out of fancies and a few firmer 
materials, to snare the vagrant fragrances that float 
free, to fix the rose-bay on the cliff, to clear a vista 
to the heavenly heights, moves the desire of every 
lover of beauty who comes here sighing for release 
from the bondage of icy winds or city conventions. 



384 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

Nor is a lordly mansion full of cares the proper hous- 
ing for this country. Far better for those who seek 
their freedom is the restfully-proportioned "bunga- 
low," with spreading roof and broad porches, appro- 
priate to the climate and harmonious in the land- 
scape, and which is now growing so greatly in favor. 
The world may be coming, but the colors and the 
fragrances, the wonderful air and the ardent sun 
remain the same, and ever will. The change that is 
going on may have its trials, but one has only to 
project the imagination far enough into the future 
to see these heights transformed from glorious wild- 
ness into glorious order. One looks ahead with 
undaunted courage to the time when both visitor 
and native will enjoy without destroying the 
charming efforts of nature; to the time when man 
will — to adapt Emerson — name the birds without 
a gun, love the wild rose and leave it on its stalk; 
to the time when, undisturbed, the arbutus will again 
carpet the woods close to the houses, and the flaming 
azaleas cover the slopes, pressing down as they once 
did against the wheels of the carnage as you drove 
along the more frequented roads. For Nature is 
long-suffering and very kind, so kind, indeed, that 
in moments of discouragement one has only to re- 
member that even if the worst were to happen, and 
these beautiful mountains become devastated by 
ignorant Invaders, when the time came, as come 
it would, that the profaner departed, Nature would 
begin anew her beneficent task of creating beauty. 
These mountains, with their tremendous fecundity 



THE HOLIDAY OF DREAMS 385 

and their resistless allies of sun and rain, in half a 
century would erase all but the ineradicable signs of 
the presence of the destroyer, presenting to some 
future generation the privilege of joining the beauty 
of the wilderness to the graces of civilized life. For 
the whole world is now one population, all knowing 
each other, and it is incredible that the work of the 
future will not be in the direction of abolishing war, 
misery, and ugliness. 

When the vitality of man and the energy of money 
are freed from the barbaric waste of to-day, physical 
and municipal, as they will be freed, and can be di- 
verted into making the earth beautiful, then, if not 
before, this enchanting region will be transformed 
into the paradise which is so evidently its function 
in the scheme of nature. For these mountains have 
been preserved as though on purpose for man's 
pleasure. Nowhere else does such variety of beauti- 
ful trees grow in natural forests, nowhere else do 
such flowers bloom in gardens of nature's planting. 
The long line of the Appalachian Mountains, the 
oldest land in this country, perhaps in the world, 
having in its southern part escaped the cold death 
of the glacier, is probably the original home whence 
many of our hardwood trees have spread over the 
Northern Hemisphere. Once connected by land with 
eastern Asia, North America shared the flora of that 
part of the world, and when the Ice Age spread its 
destroying mantle over the whole northern part of 
the earth, the plants of the New World, — which 
is, geologically speaking, a very old world, — re- 



386 THE CAROLINA MOUNTAINS 

ceding before it, took refuge in these mountains 
where soil and cHmate were ahke favorable to 
their sustenance. So that here has been preserved 
in a great natural botanical garden and arboretum 
some of the choicest growths of recent millenniums, 
growths which but for these friendly heights would 
have been numbered with the long list of forms of 
beauty that doubtless lived and vanished before 
man came upon the scene to witness and enjoy. 

And here to-day it is man's privilege to enhance 
the loveliness of the earth by use of the wonderful 
trees and flowers that grow spontaneously, as well 
as by the introduction of the many beautiful forms 
that recent years have made accessible to us from 
that sister continent where the people of the Celes- 
tial Empire and the Flowery Kingdom have so long 
made their part of the world enchanting with flow- 
ers, foliage, and trees; and where they have created 
a form of beauty expressing the personality of their 
race. Seeing the exquisite results obtained by them, 
one imagines our own civilization expressing itself 
with equal force and originality, and here in the 
Southern mountains, with every natural advantage 
to draw upon, evolving a form of landscape garden- 
ing sympathetic to the region, as beautiful as that of 
any nation, and free from those traditional conven- 
tions of ours, which introduced here would convert 
a possible paradise into a stupid repetition of build- 
ings and gardens that whatever may be their excuse 
in other climates and other regions, are utterly out 
of place here. 



THE HOLIDAY OF DREAMS 387 

Already lovely homes, and grounds beautifully 
planted with the natural growths of the mountains, 
testify to the possibilities of the country, and form, 
let us hope, the beginning of a vast domain of 
beauty, a domain created, not by a few great land- 
holders, but by the many who shall come to take 
possession. 

The Italians have a graceful way of placing in 
their village parks a notice to the effect that the 
park is entrusted to the honor of the people for whose 
pleasure it was made, and in the same spirit one would 
like to confide nature's great park of the Southern 
Appalachian Mountains to the loving care of the 
people. May it be the pleasure of all to assist the 
charming efforts of nature and to pass on, as a right- 
ful inheritance to future generations, an ever more 
enchanting Holiday of Dreams. 



THE END 



INDEX 



Appalachian Mountains, 6, io6. 
Appalachian National Park, 30, 
31, 32, 382. 

"Bald," 105, 298, 299. 
Baptists, 130, 131, 219, 220. 
Baskets, 186, 230, 238. 
Bears, 243, 286, 298, 300, 370. 
Bee-gums, 21, 329. 
Birch still, 330. 
Birds: 

Bluebird, 37. 

Buzzard, 83. 

Cardinal, or red-bird, 37, 83. 

Carolina wren. See Wren. 

Catbird, 279. 

Cedar waxwing, 67. 

Chat, 37- 

Chickadee, 37. 

Creeper, 37. 

Dove, 63. 

Finch, 37. 

Grouse, 152, 292, 293, 294. 

Hermit thrush, 83. 

Junco, 37, 311. 

"Moaning dove," 63. 

Nuthatch, 37. 

Owl, 5, 64, 65. 

Peacock, 285, 375. 

Pine warbler, 37. 

Quail, 86, 152. 

Red-bird. See Cardinal. 

Robin, 37. 

Song sparrow, 37. 

Tanager, 37. 

Thrush, 37, 63, 83, 279. 

Titmouse, 37. 



Turkey, 152, 245, 285. 

Veery, 37. 

Whip-poor-will, 5, 64. 

Woodpecker, 37, 346. 

Wood thrush, 63. 

Wren, 37, 79, 82. 
Bridges, 109, no, 238, 291, 316, 

318. 
Brooms, 186. 

Canopus, 4. 

Children, 165, 166, 222, 223. 

Chipmunk, 84. 

Christmas, 78, 81. 

Church, 90, 116, 120, 130, 131, 

218, 219, 220. 
Cornfields, 72, 73. 
Coverlets, 194-197. 
Crystals and Minerals: 

Agate, 273. 

Amethyst, 266, 271. 

Aquamarine, 270. 

Asbestos, 273. 

Beryl, 270, 271, 318. 

Cape rubies, 269. 

Chalcedony, 272. 

Chrysoprase, 273. 

Corundum, 265, 266. 

Cyanite, 271, 290, 298. 

Emerald, 266, 267. 

Flexible sandstone, 273, 348. 

Garnet, 268, 269, 290, 298. 

Graphite, 273. 

Hiddenite, 270. 

Jasper, 273. 

Kaolin, 273. 

Marble, 273. 



390 



INDEX 



Mica, 270, 271, 325. 
Quartz, 271, 286. 
Quartz crystals, 271, 272. 
Rare earths, 273. 
Rhodolite, 268, 269. 
Rock Crystal, 272. 
Ruby, 266, 268. 
Sapphire, 266. 
Serpentine, 273. 
Soapstone, 273. 
Talc, 273. 
Topaz, 266. 
Tourmaline, 271. 

Deadenings, 24. 
Deer, 152, 243. 
Dyspepsia, 163. 

Episcopalians, 130, 219, 360. 

"Fat pine," 16. 

Feuds, 207, 208. 

Fireplaces, 184, 185, 366, 367. 

Fires, 15, 16, 25. 

Flowers, Fruits, and Trees: 

Adder's-tongue, 38. 

Alders, 36, 86, 335. _ 

Alleghany thermopsis, 283. 

Anemones, 38. 

Apples, 67, 116, 191, 192, 278, 

297. 313. 
"Apricots," 68. 
Arbutus, 37. 
Ash trees, 245, 367, 370. 
Asters, 296. 
Azaleas, 59, 339, 340, 374; pink, 

39; flame-colored, 49-56,60, 

251. 265, 354, 376; white, 

250, 265, 279. 
Balmony, 331. 
Balsam trees, 240, 298, 299, 

303. 308, 309, 371. 375- 
Beans, 66, 93, 191. 
Bee-balm, 305, 335. 



Beech, 19, 71, 94, 245, 307. 

315. 370. 

Benzoin, 46. 

Birch, 19, 370. 

Bird's-foot violet, 38, 39. 

Blackberry, 43, 358, 363, 364. 

Black-eyed Susan, 360. 

Black walnut, 20, 252. 

Blood-root, 38. 

Blue-grass, 289, 299. 

Broom corn, 186. 

Broom-straw, 186, 

Buckeye, 329. 

Cane brakes, 80, 313. 

Carolina pine-sap. See Pine- 
sap. 

Cherry, 20, 29, 67, 245, 370. 

Chestnut trees, 18, 245, 287, 

305. 315. 319. 370. 
Chinkapins, 282, 328, 329. 
Clematis, 62, 243, 360. 
Clover, 289, 299, 360, 366. 
Columbine, 41, 265, 300. 
Compositae, 66. 
Corn, 65, 66, 75, 81, 205. 
Cotton, 88, 89. 
Crab tree, 297. 
Cucumber tree, 21. 
Currants, 361. 
Daisies, 360, 366. 
Dendrium buxifolium, 253, 347, 

373- 
Dogwood, 40, 49, 70, 82. 
Elderberry, 282. 
Elm, 19. 

Evening primrose, 300. 
Eyebright, 38, 309. 
Ferns, 183, 245, 307, 316, 370. 
Fig, 49, 67. 
Fire-pink, 300. 
Fir trees. See Balsam trees. 
Flowering shrub, 47. 
Fringe-tree, 42, 100, 251. 
Galax, 45, 348, 358, 361, 377. 



INDEX 



391 



Gentian, 72. 

Geum grandiflorum, 335. 

Ginger, 38. 

Ginseng, 257, 258, 340. 

Goldenrod, 296. 

Gold tree, 360. 

Gooseberries, 100, 311, 358, 

361, 372. 
Grape, 62, 67, 68, 69, 279. 
Grass, 9, 92, 289, 299, 313. 
"Heather." See Dendrium 

buxifolium. 
Hemlock, 29, 1 16, 237, 245, 250. 
Hepatica, 38. 
"Herbs," 331. 
Hickory, 19, 71. 
Holly, 81. 
Honeysuckle, 43. 
Horse-brier, 72, 81. 
"Horse sugar," 47. 
Houstonia, 335. 
Huckleberries, 45, 192, 286, 

347. 372. 
Hydrangea, 358. 
Iris verna, 38. 
Judas-tree, 40. 
Jack-oak, 81. 
Jack-vine, 249, 370. 
Kalmia latifolia. See Laurel. 
Laurel, 49, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 

240, 251,305, 339.355- 
Leucothoe, 44, 183, 339. 
Lichens, 371, 376. 
Lilies, 41, 265, 300, 335, 339. 
Lily-of -the- valley (wild), 251. 
Linden tree, 307, 370. 
Liquidambar, 21. 
Locust tree, 245, 287. 
Magnolia, 20, 315. 
Mahogany, 20. 
Maple, 19, 20, 370. 
Maypop, 68. 
Mistletoe, 79. 
Morning glory, 62, 305. 



Moss, 307, 308. 

Mountain ash, 335, 370. 

Mushrooms, 69, 354. 

Oak trees, 18, 71, 81, 94, 245, 

287, 319, 367, 370. 
Orchids, 41, 339. 
Oriental and monotypic plants, 

19, 21, 22, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 

52, 258, 275, 385, 386. 
"Our berries," 373. 
Oxalis, 245, 335, 371. 
Oxydendrum arbor eum. See 

Sourwood. 
Passion-flower, 63, 68. 
Peach, I, 2, 4, 67, 96, 192. 
Pennyroyal, 330, 331. 
Pepperidge, 21. 
Persimmon, 62, 76, 77. 
Phlox, 300. 
Pine-sap, 36, 86. 
Pine tree, 9, 16, 17, 18, 40, 41, 

79, 94, 116, 345. 
Pink, 41. 

Plum, 2, 67, 242, 328. 
Pumpkin, 73, 191. 
"Ramps," 259. 
Red-bud, 40, 49. 
Rhododendron, 49, 50, 60, 1 16, 

236, 240, 251, 284, 307, 311, 

316, 339, 340, 341, 343, 344, 

347. 355. 374. 

Rhododendron Catawbiense, 57, 
58, 59, 245, 251, 285, 287, 
309. 311. 335. 353. 371. 376. 

Rhododendron, early pink, 39, 

57, 99. 264. 
Rhododendron maximum, 57, 

58, 59, 242, 353, 369. 
Rhododendron Vaseyii, 59. 
Rose, 279. 

Rosebay. See Rhododendron 
Catawbiense. 

Rye, 75. 93. 

Sassafras, 46, 70. 



392 



INDEX 



Saxifrage, 41, 265, 311, 335, 

354. 370- 

Sedge-grass, 80, 186. 

Sedum, 311, 354, 361, 370. 

Service-tree, 2, 358. 

Shortia galacifolia, 274, 275, 
276, 339- 

Shrub-yellow-root. See Yellow- 
root. 

Silver-bell tree, 42, 339, 

Smilax, 62. 

Snakeroot, 333. 

Sorghum, 74. 

Sorrel, 356. 

Sour-gum, 21. 

Sourwood, 22, 70, 300, 305, 333, 

339- 
Sparkleberry, 45, 100. 
Spice-bush, 46. 
Spirea, 358. 
Spruce, 29, 335, 370. 
St. Johnswort, 311. 
Strawberry, 67, 279, 280, 282, 

335. 356, 357. 358. 360, 366. 
Strawberry shrub (sweet bub- 

by). 47- 
Sumac, 71. 
Sweet-fern, 61-265. 
Sweet-gum tree, 21, 70. 
Symplocos tinctoria, 47. 
Trillium, 38. 
Trumpet-vine, 62. 
Tulip-tree, 19, 29, 39, 71, 94, 

245, 287, 307, 319, 370. 
Tupelo tree, 21. 
Turtle-head, 295, 300. 
Umbrella tree, 21. 
Umbrella leaf, 44. 
Vetches, 62. 
Vines, 62. 

Violets, 36, 38, 39, 41. 
Watermelons, 67. 
Weeping willow, 49. 
Wheat, 75, 76, 93. 



White pine, 116, 345. 

Wild cherry, 20, 29. 

Wistaria, 44. 

Witch-hazel, 81, 377. 

Woodbine, 62. 

Yellow-root, 42, 339. 
Fords, 241, 242, 282, 283, 317, 

325. 358. 
Forest, 15-35, 245. 246, 307. 3o8, 

370, 371. 
Fomalhaut, 5. 
Fruits. See Flowers. 

Glacial action, 15, 107. 
Good Roads Movement, 152. 
Goodwill Library, 327. 

Honey, 22, 359. 

Indians, 24, 122, 233-238. 
Indian mounds, 278, 279. 
Insects, 41, 63, 64, 65, 82. 

Jug-maldng, 187, 188, 189. 

Lakes. See Streams. 
Logging, 319-324. 
Log house, 184, 185, 190, 258. 
Loom, 183, 193-196, 281, 329. 
Lowlands, 49, 89, 90, 92, 97, 351. 
Lumbering, 25, 29, 30, 33, 34, 319- 
324- 

Maps, government, 336, 337. 

Methodists, 130, 219. 

"Milk-sick," 281. 

Mills, 73, 74, 235, 329. 

Minerals. See Crystals. 

Molasses, 74. 

Moonshiners, 9, 10, 91, 201-217. 

Mountaineers, 11, 12, 150, 151. 
153. 191; history of, 138-147; 
customs and character, 161- 
170, 182-200; language, 1 7 1-8 1. 



INDEX 



393 



Mountains: 
Bald, 229. 
, Balsam, 104, 248, 249, 296-300. 
Beech Mountain, 355, 361, 373. 
Big Yellow Bald, 299, 334, 336. 
Black Dome, 303, 309. 
Black, 104, 302-314, 333. 
Blue Ridge, 2, 3, 6, 88, 102, 

106, 250, 341, 349, 350, 354, 

380. 
Bullhead Mountain, 303. 
Caesar's Head, 88, 92, 93. 
Calloway's High Peak, 373. 
Cataluchee Mountain, 300. 
Chimney Rock Mountain, 97, 

99, 100. 
Chimney Top, 253. 
Chunky Gal, 259. 
Clingman Dome, 240, 244, 

246. 
Cold Mountain, 277, 278, 286- 

289, 296. 
Cowee, 104, 232. 
Crabtree Bald, 297. 
Craggy Mountain, 303, 305. 
Devil's Court-House, 254. 
Elk Mountain, 126. 
Flat Top, 356. 
Fork Mountain, 283. 
Glassy Mountain, 89, 90, 91. 
Grandfather Mountain, 58, 59, 

102, 349-352, 355- 362, 370- 

378. 
Grandmother Mountain, 371, 

378. 
Grassy Ridge Bald, 334, 336. 
Gray beard, 102, 303. 
Great Hogback, 264. 
Great Smokies. See Smoky 

Mountains. 
Hanging Rock, 360, 361. 
Hawksbill, 338, 351. 
Hogback, 6, 9, 53, 89, 93, 113. 
Howard Knob, 358, 359. 



Hump, 336. 

Junaluska, 299. 

King's Mountain, 7, 12, 96. 

Lickstone Bald, 286, 296. 

Linville Mountain, 338, 341, 

348. 
Melrose Mountain, 55, 210. 
Mount Guyot, 240, 244. 
Mount Mitchell, 31, 103, 306- 

312. 
Nantahala, 103, 105, 253, 258, 

259. 
Newfound, 104, 297. 
Old Rumbling Bald, 95, 96, 

97. 
Pinnacle, 102, 303. 
Pisgah, 31, 104, 135, 290, 291, 

293, 295, 296. 
Pizen Cove Top, 281. 
Plott's Balsams, 300. 
Pumpkin Patch Mountain, 334. 
Rabun Bald, 253. 
Rat, The, 135. 
Richland Balsam, 286. 
Roan Mountain, 334, 335, 336. 
Rocky Spur, 9, 51, 53. 
Saluda Mountains, 93. 
Sam Knob, 277, 286, 296. 
Satulah, 252. 

Scape Cat Ridge, 284, 285. 
Shining Rock, 277, 284, 285, 

286. 
Shortoff, 253. 
Smokies, 29, 103, 104, 105, 232, 

239-247. 
Snake Den Mountain, 338. 
Soco Mountain, 235. 
Standing Indian, 102, 259. 
Sugarloaf, 97. 
Sugar Top, 279, 281. 
Table Rock, 92, 338, 351. 
Tennessee Bald, 277. 
Tennessee Ridge, 277, 290. 
Toxaway Mountain, 264, 265. 



394 



INDEX 



Tryon Mountain, 6, 53, 208, 

350. 351- 
Unaka Mountains, 102, 103, 

105. 
Warrior Mountain, 53. 
Whiteside Mountain, 251-256, 

260. 
White Top, 373. 
Yeates Knob, 304. 
Yellow Mountain, 315. 
Museums: 

American Museum of Natural 

History, 273. 
Field Columbian Museum, 273. 
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 

273- 

Morgan Bement Collection, 
267. 

United States National Mu- 
seum, 273. 

Valentine Museum, 279. 
Music, 167, 168. 

Negro, 12, 13, 14, 67, 77, 78, 114. 
Nurseries, 153, 338, 339. 

Opossum, 76. 

Panther, 243, 300. 
Paper-pulp mill, 27, 28, 30. 
Pennyroyal still, 330. 
Persons: 

Alexander, Captain, 134. 

Ashe, Samuel, 123. 

Aunt Eliza, 13, 14. 

Aunt Hootie, 13. 

Baird, Zebulon, 123, 125. 

Baring, Charles, 115, 1 16. 

Big Witch, 237. 

Bismarck, 117. 

Blaylock, Mrs. Nancy, 281. 

Boone, Daniel, 359. 

Bradley, 142. 

Buncombe, Col. Edward, 128. 



Calloway, Irving, 376. 

Campbell, 285. 

Choiseuil, Count de, 1 16. 

Chunn, Samuel, 130. 

Coffey, Mrs., 358. 

Craddock, Charles Egbert, 103. 

Davidson, William, 134. 

Dickson, Dr. Samuel, 130. 

Drayton, Rev. John G., 117. 

Elliott, 116. 

Foster, 142. 

Gray, Asa, 275, 335. 

Hampton, 142. 

Hampton, Gen. Wade, 260. 

Hunt, Richard M., 120. 

Kelsey, S. T., 339. 

King, Dr. Mitchell C, 117. 

Lanier, Sidney, 42. 

Lowndes, 116. 

"Mac," Jim, 243 (MacMahon). 

Madcap, 166. 

McClure, 142. 

McRae, 375. 

Meese, Melissa, 281. 

Memminger, G. C, 117. 

Metcalf, 166. 

Michaux, 275, 340, 349. 

Middleton, 116. 

Mitchell, Rev. Elisha, 309,310, 

311- 
Molyneux, 116. 
Morgan, 142. 

Newton, Rev. George, 126. 
Olmsted, Frederick Law, 120, 

154- 
Osborne, Adoniram Judson, 

278. 
Pack, George W., 133. 
Patton, James, 127, 128, 130. 
Patton, Montreville, 128. 
Pinckney, 116. 
Ravenel, Capt. S. P., 252. 
Reese, old Sally, 285. 
Rhodes, 142. 



INDEX 



395 



Robbins, Mrs., 195. 

Rogers, 142. 

Rutledge, 116. 

Sargent, Prof., 275. 

Short, Prof., 275. 

Simms, Greenville Female 

Seminary, 13. 
Smith, James M., 128. 
Stradley, Rev. Thomas, 130. 
Swain, David Lowry, 126. 
Swain, George, 125. 
Tomson, Mrs. Hint, 195. 
Vance, Zebulon B., 133. 
Vanderbilt, George W., 120, 

132. 
Walker, Felix, 129. 
Ward, Mrs. Levi, 196. 
Williams, Rich, 187, 188, 189. 
Wilson, Adolphus, 306. 
Wilson, Big Tom, 305, 310, 

311- 
Wing, Prof. Charles Hallet, 

326, 327, 328. 
Places: 
Alexander, 134. 
Allenstand, 229. 
Asheville, 122-136. 
Bakersville, 316, 333. 
Balsam Gap, 301. 
Banner Elk, 360, 361. 
Bat Cave, 97, 98. 
Bear Creek Settlement, 329. 
Beaver Dam, 126. 
Biltmore, 120, 132, 147-160, 

230. 
Blowing Rock, 350-355- 
Boone, 358, 359. 
Brevard, 119, 262. 
Broad River Valley, 94, 97, 99, 

100. 
Bryson City, 232. 
Buncombe County, 122, 128, 

129, 133- 
Burnsville, 314. 



Caesar's Head, 88, 89, 92, 93. 
Cane River Valley, 304, 305, 

313. 314- 
Galloways, 361. 
Canton, 278. 
Cashier Valley, 260. 
Cherokee, 235. 
Chimney Rock, 88, 93-IOO. 
Cloudland Hotel, 334. 
Corundum Hill, 258, 266. 
Cranberry, 334, 336. 
Crossnore, 338. 
Cruso, 287, 290. 
Cullasagee Valley, 257, 258, 

267. 
CuUowhee Valley, 248. 
Dark corners, 10, 90, 209-212. 
Davis Gap, 296. 
Day Book, 332. 
Dillsboro, 232. 
"Dismal," 92, 93. 
Dutch Cove, 281, 282. 
Eagle Hotel, 128. 
Eagle's Nest, 299. 
Elk Park, 336. 
"English's," 318. 
Esmeralda Inn, 97. 
Flat Rock, 111-118. 
Franklin, 257, 258. 
French Broad Valley, 262, 263, 

295- 
Garden Creek, 278, 290. 
Gum Spring, 134. 
Hendersonville, 119. 
Henson Cove, 279, 281, 282. 
Hickory, 354. 
Hickorynut Gap, 94. 
Highlands, 250-253, 257, 263, 

339- 
Horse Cove, 252. 
Hot Springs, 98, 124, 127. 
"Ivy Country," 229, 305. 
John's River Valley, 352, 353, 

374- 



396 



INDEX 



Jonathan Creek Valley, 235. 

Kawana, 338. 

"Laurel Country," 229. 

Ledger. 325-329, 332. 

Lenoir, 354. 

Linville, 338, 339, 340, 344. 

Lofus Lory, 332. 

"Logan's," 95. 

Lost Cove Cliffs, 351. 

Lynn, 42. 

McRae's, 374, 375. 

Micaville, 316, 325. 

Mountain View Hotel, 97. 

Morristown, 123. 

Old Fort, 124, 132. 

Pacolet Valley, 41, 80, iii. 

Paint Rock, 127. 

Pigeon River Valley, 30. 

" Pink Beds," 295. 

Pisgah Forest, 151, 152. 

Pizen Cove, 281. 

Plumtree Country, 242. 

Ravenswood, 117. 

Roan Mountain Station, 336. 

Rock Creek Valley, 334. 

Saluda, iii. 

Sapphire Country, 119, 158, 

261-266, 274, 275. 
Spruce Pine, 270, 316, 318, 

332. 
Swannanoa Valley and Gap, 

124. 
Sylva, 232. 
Toxaway, 158, 263. 
Tuxedo, 119. 
Traumfest, 2, 3, 6, 7-14, 55, 

65, 67, 88. 
Valle Crucis, 360. 
Waynesville, 232, 296, 297, 

298. 
Whiteside Cove, 259, 260. 
Whittier, 232, 235. 
Pottery. See Jug-making. 
Presbyterians, 130, 219. 



Rabbits, 85, 86. 

Railroad, 119, 124, 131, 132, 232, 

258, 263, 305, 314, 326, 380. 
Rat, 84. 

Rattlesnakes, 288, 289. 
Rivers. See Streams. 
Roads, 8, 108, 113, 124, 127, 129, 

149, 151, 158, 305, 339. 

Schools, 126, 197, 221, 223; Bre- 
vard Institute, 225, 226; Allen- 
stand, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230; 

Biltmore Industries, 230, 231; 

Indian, 237; Ledger, 326, 327. 
Scorpio, 368. 
Sled, 14, 82. 

Snakes. See Rattlesnakes. 
Snow, 81, 82. 
Snuff, 169, 170. 
Spinning-wheel, 183, 193, 227. 
Springs, 106, 295, 299, 371. 
Squirrels, 84, 370. 
St. John-in-the- Wilderness, 116, 

117. 
Streams and Lakes: 

Armstrong Creek, 317. 

Bear Creek, 329. 

Big Laurel Creek, 229. 

Broad River, 94, 98. 

Cane Creek, 94, 333. 

Catawba River, 31. 

Cattail Branch, 313. 

Cold Creek, 287. 

Cowee Creek, 267, 268. 

Crabtree Creek, 297. 

Cullasagee River, 258. 

Davidson's River, 134. 

Dutch Creek, 360. 

Estatoe River. See Toe River. 

French Broad River, 93, 98, 
121, 124, 127, 263. 

Grandmother Creek, 340. 

Green River, 94, iii. 

Hickorynut Creek, 98. 



INDEX 



397 



Horsepasture River, 261, 262, 

275- 
Ivy River, 305. 
Lake Fairfield, 261, 262. 
Lake Sapphire, 261, 262. 
Lake Toxaway, 261, 262. 
Laurel Fork, 243. 
Linville River, 243, 338, 341, 

342, 374, 375. 
Little Crabtree Creek, 304, 316. 
Little Tennessee River, 258. 
Mill River, 358. 
Nolichucky River, 315. 
Oconalufty River, 235, 237, 238. 
Pacolet River, 7, 80, III, 131, 

381. 
Pigeon River, 277, 278, 282, 

283, 284, 287. 
Pisgah Creek, 291. 
Plumtree Creek, 338. 
Pool Creek, 98, 99. 
Plott Creek, 300. 
Richland Creek, 296. 
Soco Fall, 236. 
"Sugar Fork," 257. 
Swannanoa River, 127, 134, 

305- 
Tessentee Creek, 271. 
Tiger River, 187, 188. 
Toe River, 304, 315-318. 



Toxaway River, 262. 
Tuckasegee, 249. 
Valley River, 278. 
Vaughn's Creek, 210. 
Watauga River, 361, 363, 369. 
Waterfalls, 98, 99, 236, 249, 

257, 264, 360; Linville, 340- 

346. 

"Tar-heel," 84. 

Thermal belt, 3, 96. 

Trees. See Flowers. 

Toad, 368. 

Trout, 243, 307, 338, 343, 344, 369. 

Tumble-down stile, 115. 

Typhoid, 163. 

Washing clothes, 198, 199, 200. 
Weaving, 193-197, 227-231. 
Weeks Bill, 30, 31. 
Whipsaw, 313. 
Whiskey, 9, ID, 66, 201-217. 
Wildcat, 243. 
Wood-rat, 85. 
Woodcarving, 230, 231. 
Woodchuck, 85. 

Yonahlossee Road, 339, 375, 376. 

Zodiacal light, 5. 



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